NBCU interim ad chair discusses industry ahead of must-see upfront presentation

While Yaccarino’s swift exit will cast a shadow over the upfronts, protests related to the Writers’ Guild of America strike are anticipated to recur at events throughout the week, with Netflix choosing to opt for a virtual-only presentation. 

At its gathering, NBCU is expected to tout its programming across NBCU’s cable and broadcast channels and streamer Peacock, including the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, which features a distribution partnership with Twitter. The media company will also be pointing to its vast portfolio as a counter to advertisers nervous to commit budgets due to economic uncertainty on stage.

Related: Everything advertisers need to know about Yaccarino

“The legacy concern of putting dollars down and they’re locked down is not as relevant as what it was five years ago,” said Marshall. “The idea of firming up dollars gets overblown in this marketplace.”

That’s because NBCU’s sales model is what Marshall describes as emblematic of modern dealmaking with built-in flexibility and distribution partners across owned and partner digital platforms to give marketers the opportunity to hit audiences consuming NBCU content on any screen.

“A few years ago, there had been a migration of dollars to social,” said Marshall. “We’re seeing a bunch of advertisers now taking their dollars and moving it back [to TV], especially to cable and to sports.”

On May 1, Marshall spoke with Ad Age to discuss competition between TV and social media platforms, the upfront market’s role in the age of programmatic buying and why NBCU isn’t worried about the economy.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity

So with conversation around multi-screen viewing and fragmenting video budgets, is that your pitch to invest with NBCU rather than with social platforms that may be cheaper on their own?

It’s interesting: one of the things that we’ve seen, especially on our cable side, is advertisers moving dollars back from social to TV. What we continue to hear is they were losing their brand metrics, and they also were losing the purchase intent on the social side. A few years ago, there had been a migration of dollars to social. We’re seeing a bunch of advertisers now taking their dollars and moving it back, especially to cable and to sports.

There is that theory of do you spread your dollars out and go into long tail and you end up in areas that may or may not be brand aligned with what you’re looking for, so we’ve gone out to the marketplace to all the agencies with very specific overviews in regards to reach and frequency. Because a lot of times people would think that you’re reaching the same people within NBCU, but when you look at how wide a swath of content that we have, that’s not the case.

If you look at NBC and Peacock, in one month, those two deliver 159 million people. Of those 159 million people, there’s only 10% duplication in that number. So while there’s this fragmentation that has happened, the great news for a marketer is they're actually finding new audiences.

What are the biggest challenges facing NBCU or the sell-side in general this upfront season?

We feel much better from macroeconomic elements than where we did probably a couple of months ago. We’ve had a great first and second quarter; from the scatter marketplace, we’re right where we want to be.

There is a mindset as well—the idea of not thinking of NBCU as a legacy company. When we look at our impressions, 40% of our consumption now is done on digital, and our digital is tremendously different than digital in general. Digital is a catch-all term, but if you think about our streaming, 95% of all of our ads are seen to full completion. That does not exist from a normal digital standpoint. So we have stories we need to tell, probably have to debunk some of the myths that are out there, but I don’t feel like there’s huge challenges in front of us now that the economy is seemingly getting its sea legs back.

So how do you anticipate NBCU’s upfront will perform?

It’s still going to be a really strong uptrend overall, but I do think as more dollars continue to migrate to programmatic—the upfront marketplace will still play a very significant role, but we have advertisers who are buying to be on the air tonight on programmatic. As more dollars flow through programmatic channels, you’ll have more of that real-time marketing.

We’re still seeing it’s going to be a strong upfront because of the categories: the movie studio category will have more releases than it did pre-pandemic, we have 60 auto launches that are going to happen over the next broadcast year, 32 pharma launches and that doesn’t take into account things like retail and other areas that are going to be very big in fourth quarter. You’ve seen it in the earnings reports as well. Brands like P&G and McDonald’s that have been able to pass through costs to the consumer, and the consumer has been okay with it. You’re not able to do that if you’re not building your brand.