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For years, NBCUniversal’s advertising and partnerships teams have talked about how well advertising works on consumers. This year, ahead of a busier and far more predictable upfront season than a year ago, the group is offering new ad formats that it hopes can also assist advertisers’ broadening needs.
Ahead of the company’s Monday afternoon presentation to Madison Avenue, the company is unveiling a half-dozen new ad formats, which aim to provide advertising clients format choice and flexibility, while also looking for ways to make the ads themselves more engaging for viewers. Much of the innovation was born out of advertisers’ requests for flexibility a year ago, which influenced the company’s format development.
“Flexibility was probably the ultimate keyword of last year’s upfront marketplace,” said Josh Feldman, chief marketing officer, NBCUniversal advertising sales and partnerships. “But advertisers requesting flexibility goes beyond just wanting cancellation option flexibility. It goes into the creative space and marketing space as well, and that is what we have attempted to do with a lot of these commercial innovations.”
The ad formats, for which NBCUniversal is seeking out early brand partners to test and learn, include interactive features, shoppable functions and integrations in NBCUniversal show programming along with opportunities to partner with show talent on 15-second tee-ups and make quick-turnaround creative.
Inside the formats
An interactive, shoppable format called @homeShopping urges viewers to scan a QR code and then customize their orders on their phone, while Choose Your Destiny prompts viewers to engage in social voting or choice selection about what kind of ad they’d like to see. Two other formats, Stay in Show and Interactive Scripted Commercial Launch, both look to integrate commercial breaks more seamlessly into NBCUniversal programming instead of the usual cut to black.
Stay in Show will mean an advertisers’ creative can begin playing from a screen on the set of the program itself. Interactive Scripted Commercial Launch will integrate a brand within the show and then, later, the show within the brand message to offer a more seamless transition from program to advertisement.
NBCUniversal is also offering talent integrations with Take:15, in which NBCUniversal talent tees up a brand message with a joke, a tip or another piece of custom content. And it’s offering a fast-turnaround format, Look Live, which shoots and finalizes premium advertising content in less than 36 hours so marketers can respond to viral moments and topics du jour with timely creative.
All of the formats are designed to make advertising on NBCUniversal’s linear networks, its digital properties and its streamer Peacock more engaging, leading to more customer satisfaction and better results for advertisers, said Collette Winn, vp, creative partnerships, commerce and innovation, advertising and partnerships, NBCUniversal.
Offsetting ‘dull repetition’
“There are so many moments in commercials where we can tune out, where it can be a dull repetition of 30-second spots,” said Winn, who has been leading the development of the broadcaster’s commercial innovation slate. “This is really trying to offset that, change that and really drive more meaning for a brand with our audiences.”
Heading into conversations with marketers, ad sales executives have some new data to back up their pitches: According to NBCUniversal research, more than 90% of viewers appreciate commercial innovation ads compared to standard ad formats, 79% of them are less likely to change the channel and 88% retain strong brand memorability, Feldman and Winn said.
NBCUniversal will seek our brand partners to test out the new formats, some of which will require changes on the company’s content development and production side. Stay in Show, for instance, requires shows to have lead-ins to commercial breaks that show a screen of some kind, where an advertisement can begin playing.
“We want to make sure that shot is captured, we want to make sure there’s emphasis on that and that we can really draw attention to it in the right way,” Winn explained. (Feldman stressed that showrunners and program developers embrace commercialization and lean in “almost all of the time.”)
The six new ad formats come as NBCUniversal looks to continue transforming its advertising business as consumers seek out new forms of content, including on the growing slate of ad-free video-on-demand options in the marketplace. NBCUniversal has opted to reduce linear ad loads several times in the past several years, and debuted streamer Peacock with five minutes or less of advertising.
Feldman and his team are focused on figuring out the right kind of executions that can make advertising its most effective in an environment where consumers face more choice than ever—including choice of migrating away if they see an ad they dislike.
“Viewing habits are changing, so we are adjusting,” Feldman said.
