NBCUniversal Fast-Tracks Live Event Audience Insights for Advertisers

Live events create urgency for viewers, and NBCUniversal wants its audience insights to have that same urgency.

Ahead of the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, NBCU is announcing accelerated first-party audience capabilities to improve live event programming for marketers and drive ad effectiveness with new insights.

“When you take a step back and think about the focus for us and our mission at NBCU from the ad side, it’s to drive ad effectiveness for our clients,” Alison Levin, president of NBCUniversal advertising and partnerships, told ADWEEK. “It’s clear that live moments do just that, so it’s our focus for Cannes, and we’re doubling down on our offering.”

That “doubling down” involves a two-pronged approach.

First, the company will deliver quick-turn, rich insights into interest and intent signals across categories to provide marketers with a deeper understanding of audiences.

For example, within roughly two business days, advertisers will understand aggregated viewer preferences, such as the type of car they’re in the market for and actions they’ve taken such as dealership visits.

According to Levin, receiving that level of insight in the past could take up to a week, and the real difference is the company’s ability to utilize Peacock for live programming and bring insights across the full portfolio.

“The market has had linear insight for some time—for instance, when you think about ACR data. But we’re the only ones who have this level of insight in streaming because of our leadership in live on Peacock,” Levin said. “As streaming continues to grow as a part of live viewership, this is only going to get more important for marketers to understand who these new audiences are.”

In addition to the quick-turn, live insights, the company will deliver strategic, live audience segments that enable marketers to re-engage with consumers throughout their NBCUniversal viewing journey.

For instance, a wellness brand can find wellness enthusiasts who tuned into specific live moments across the company’s linear and streaming portfolio. Levin explained it as retargeting at “valuable, interesting moments.”

“The important part of this is the ability to drive real scale,” Levin said. “And we’re able to do that because of the scale that we have on Peacock with live.”

A look at live results

According to the company, NBCU programs live event content every day of the year, including sports, entertainment, and news in English and in Spanish across screens, devices and platforms.

Additionally, the company found that live events are effective for marketers throughout the funnel, driving awareness with +28% ad memorability; consideration with +23% purchase intent and +112% search engagement; and conversation with +19% brand recommendation.

The results are evident with NBCU’s partnership with Walmart Connect, which shows that live sports programming saw a lift of 43% in average transaction value, a 12% increase in transaction rate at Walmart, and a 21% bump in new buyers vs. standard CTV ads.

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The new insight announcements also come at a pivotal time for NBCU.

In addition to Cannes Lions, the company is in the midst of TV upfront negotiations, where buyers previously told ADWEEK that budgets have been shrinking amid market headwinds and an increase in more flexible spending opportunities.

Amid this disruption and increasing fragmentation, more spend is moving to live events and sports, where faster, richer insights become even more valuable.

NBCU’s new offerings also come about one month before its live programming extravaganza of the Paris Olympics.

“A key priority for us is helping marketers and our partners get all the data that they need to understand the power and the success and the performance that we’re seeing from live, which, of course, Olympics is a key component of that,” Levin said. “When marketers see these results, they continue to come in and invest more because of the power of the offering.”