NBCUniversal Becomes First Major Publisher to Wrap Upfront Talks

That’s a wrap for NBCUniversal.

Today, the company announced it had closed upfront talks, becoming the first major publisher to cross the finish line in what’s been the slowest upfront season in years.

Despite ongoing economic uncertainty, NBCU is ending its 2023 upfront negotiations with total cash commitments that are “roughly in line with last year,” according to the company. The 2022 upfront reached $7 billion in commitments, becoming the company’s highest-grossing upfront in its history.

Demand increased in categories such as pharma, insurance, CPG and wireless. Volume was also roughly in line with the previous year’s.

Sports; Peacock; tentpole events; premium content; advanced, digital and data-driven advertising; Hispanic and experiential marketing drove this year’s talks.

In particular, sports was up nearly double-digits when compared to the prior year, with digital properties seeing a record 50% growth driven by the increase of sports on Peacock. Among other highlights, the ongoing FIFA Women’s World Cup (Telemundo has broadcast rights) doubled advertising revenue vs. FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019 and welcomed a record-breaking number of advertisers across auto, connectivity and wireless.   

Peacock was up 30% in upfront commitments when compared to last year and has had 60% growth in the last two years. Additionally, Telemundo experienced its fourth straight year of growth at the upfront, nearly reaching double-digit growth and generating its highest volume since 2019-2020.

NBCUniversal’s programmatic growth is up more than 50% year over year, and the company has seen a shift to data-informed buying across linear and digital with key categories including insurance, real estate, entertainment, travel and retail growing to one-third of total linear Adsmart, the advanced advertising solutions that power audience-based media activation for NBCU’s One Platform. That’s a growth of 25% year over year.

Thus far, the company hasn’t revealed whether its CPMs (cost per thousand viewers reached) increased or decreased, with wide speculation that the slow upfront meant advertisers could expect rollbacks for 2023.

In 2022, the company received CPM increases in the high single digits.

Tentpole events

Additionally, tentpoles highlighted during NBCUniversal’s upfront week presentation in May, which included this year’s BravoCon, 2024 Olympics in Paris and the SNL 50th Anniversary exceeded company expectations, drawing strong interest. 

For BravoCon, the company will bring in a larger slate of partners with new and returning brands across all categories including jewelry, pet care and home furnishings, among others. Meanwhile, sales are nearly double the pace for the Olympics in Paris when compared to the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 at the one-year benchmark, with more than $100M of new Olympic advertisers who were not in Tokyo.

For SNL’s 50th, NBCU is looking at a full 7-month promotional window and has received partnership requests across several categories, including auto, wireless, tech, beverage, insurance, retail, CPG, financial and travel.

An eventful upfront

NBCU’s upfront news comes despite a rollercoaster year for the company, with former CEO Jeff Shell being ousted by Comcast in April and former ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino exiting for the Twitter CEO position days before the company’s upfront week kickoff presentation.

However, following the company’s upfront week kickoff in May, Mark Marshall, named interim chairman of NBCUniversal’s advertising and partnerships group, assured Adweek that negotiations were business as usual for the company and Yaccarino’s exit wouldn’t affect talks.

“I don’t think it changes anything on that side of things. Obviously, I worked with Linda for 10 years. We were aligned in terms of getting the value for our content and our properties. So I don’t think it really changes a whole lot on that side of what we’re doing,” Marshall said.

Marshall also noted that the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike wouldn’t have a drastic effect on negotiations either.

“We feel really great about the schedule that we have all the way through the end of this year, so hopefully, this comes to a resolution in short order. But we feel really good about it,” Marshall said. “This was not a surprise. We had been game-planning for the past year on that. So we feel great about the content that we have already shot.”

Striking a balance for the fall

Though Marshall said the strike didn’t affect negotiations, NBC recently joined CBS, Fox and The CW in changing its fall lineup amid the ongoing strike, with previously announced series such as Night Court not receiving fall premieres.

“We have a lot of unscripted because we do have The Voice, and we have Saturday night football and Sunday Night Football, so that is a nice security blanket to have. But the truth is the business has changed so much in the last few years, and we are really on a year-round development cycle and production cycle,” Jeff Bader, president of entertainment program planning strategy for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, told Adweek in May. “So we’re in the fortunate position that many of the shows that we’ve announced for the fall, we will have them even if there’s a prolonged strike.”

NBC noted that premieres for all previously announced fall series, including Night Court, Extended Family, Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU will be announced at a later date.