NBCUniversal Kicks Off Road to NBC’s 100th Anniversary at CES; Provides Advertisers Unprecedented Access to the World’s Biggest Content Moments

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The Company Unveils New Engagement Capabilities for Marketers Spanning Ad Innovation and Creative Optimization Ahead of the Most Exciting Premium, Live Events

New Data Demonstrates Power of Television as Unmatched Performance Marketing Engine for All Brands

NBCUniversal Joins Comcast’s Universal Ads as Key Launch Partner for Industry-Changing Premium Video Advertising Solution

Las Vegas, NV – January 6, 2025 – Today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), NBCUniversal previewed the future of full-funnel advertising for the industry, unveiling new engagement capabilities within its One Platform technology stack as well as success metrics that demonstrate the effectiveness of TV advertising – all ahead of a monumental two-year run of premium, English and Spanish-language programming that kicks off this year. Powered by 100 years of storytelling and innovation, NBCUniversal will provide marketers with unprecedented access to the biggest programming moments in the world, leading up to NBC’s 100th Anniversary milestone in Fall 2026.

Engagement

NBCUniversal is supercharging the viewer and advertiser experience on Peacock with new formats and product features and expanding its creative optimization capabilities with new predictive ad models to forecast creative impact for the world’s biggest live events.

• New and expanded Peacock features for viewers & advertisers:
  • Peacock’s “Live in Browse” feature brings live events to life on the home page, automatically playing in the top row as soon as viewers open the app. Beginning this month, “Live in Browse” will be available for marketers, so they can align their brands with these highly visible marquee moments.
  • Additionally, NBCUniversal is making its industry-leading Pause Ad format available within live events. Pause Ads on Peacock drive +43% lift in site visitation for brands and +43% higher memorability compared to standard ads—demonstrating the effectiveness of this format.
  • Looking ahead, Peacock will begin piloting new product features on its iOS and Android mobile apps this month to drive even deeper fan engagement around its most popular titles, all in one place. These daily mini-games and prediction games, along with new curated vertical video playlists of can’t-miss clips from Peacock’s biggest shows, will be tested before a broader rollout, unlocking new potential opportunities for advertisers.
• More predictive ad models to forecast & optimize creative performance:
  • NBCUniversal’s Ad Creative Engine uses generative AI, machine learning, and statistical models to understand historical performance of ad creative within specific content and predict how creative will perform for specific KPIs including brand awareness, message breakthrough, ad likeability, and search engagement.
  • NBCUniversal is now expanding this capability to the biggest moments in live event content, with new models for golf and ad innovations, including Pause Ads and Engagement Ads, as well as an updated Super Bowl ad model for February 2026, leveraging 3x more data points since 2018.
  • Heading into Olympic Games Milan Cortina 2026, NBCUniversal has seen significant success with its Olympic ad model, which is powered by +30B data points derived from more than 1,600 ads spanning four Olympic games—generating +73% message memorability for optimized creative.
• New emotional metadata to drive mid-funnel conversion:
  • NBCUniversal has tested the effects of aligning the emotional metadata of advertiser creative with the emotional metadata of content using AI and machine-learning to drive impact on mid and lower funnel conversion.
  • Preliminary tests have shown double-digit lifts in emotionally congruent ad and content pairings.
  • The company plans to make this capability more widely available later this year.

Data

NBCUniversal’s One Platform was designed to unify streaming and linear media planning, activation, and measurement for marketers, while delivering a highly relevant and engaging advertising experience for viewers. Across the One Platform tech stack and bespoke partnerships, NBCUniversal’s data clearly demonstrates that TV is an unmatched performance marketing engine.

• New data partnerships prove television is an unmatched performance engine:
  • One Platform Total Audience continues to deliver full-funnel effectiveness for brands in every category. In the beauty, retail, and pharmaceutical categories, One Platform Total Audience campaigns have respectively generated a:
    • +32% increase in purchase intent and +33% increase in brand favorability;
    • 2x increase in search engagement and +64% increase in incremental store visits;
    • +28% greater reach, +22% higher search engagement, and +7% lift in prescription conversions
  • NBCUniversal was the first publisher partner for Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration, a solution that brings publishers and advertisers together to discover, reach and measure high-value audiences. Through the Beta, advertisers experienced 2X more efficient conversion, 10X better match rates, and 90% lift compared to standard audience onboarding.
  • CPG brands that participated in NBCUniversal’s retail media data collaboration pilot with Instacart saw between 8-17x return on ad spend with an average of 37% new-to-brand buyers on Instacart*.
  • During a successful real-time outcome measurement beta period, NBCUniversal tracked conversions attributed to streaming campaign exposures in flight. Upon completion of the campaigns, advertisers saw an average 8.5x increase in ROAS, indicating the overall effectiveness of NBCU’s streaming environment. This measurement capability will be generally available beginning in Q1.

Premium Content

No other company will have the premium entertainment content that NBCUniversal will have to offer over the next two years. Fall 2025 kicks off with the much-anticipated return of the NBA to NBC and to Peacock for the first time, as well as the return of BravoCon in Las Vegas. An unprecedented February 2026 brings the Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games, Super Bowl LX, and the NBA All-Star Game to NBCUniversal all within 10 days of each other – a first in sports-media history; the WNBA tips off in May; June adds the Spanish-Language presentation of the 2026 FIFA World Cup; and Fall 2026 will showcase the WNBA Finals and the Big Ten Football Championship Game. All of this tentpole programming is set against the backdrop of NBC’s 100th Anniversary in 2026, celebrating the network’s legacy and ushering in the company’s future.

• NBCUniversal joins Comcast’s all-new “Universal Ads” platform as premiere launch partner:
  • As announced earlier this morning, NBCUniversal is a launch partner for Comcast’s “Universal Ads” (UA) – an industry-changing, cross-publisher advertising solution enabling new advertisers simplified access into the premium video category.
  • Launching in Q1, the UA ad manager will provide access to scaled, qualified audiences delivered on premium content that will drive full-funnel performance for advertisers while opening new demand channels for publishers.

*Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.