Peacock may still lag behind some of its competitors in terms of paid subscribers, but NBCUniversal wants to make it known that it is very much a player in the video advertising ecosystem.
The company on Thursday provided an update to its 2021-2022 up-front negotiations, including $500 million in up-front commitments to Peacock. That is on top of the $100 million in commitments the streaming service secured last year ahead of its launch.
Peacock’s haul is part of more than $1.5 billion in digital video ad sales secured by the company this up front, 20 percent higher than 2019 (which was the last “normal” pre-pandemic advertising year). The company says that every advertising category “bounced back,” and cited new ad buyers like TikTok and Uber.
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Peacock launched last July, though the pandemic delayed its planned Olympics push and temporarily halted production on many of its original shows. Since then it has leaned on its library of the NBC sitcom The Office, and struck a deal with the WWE to merge WWE Network and its signature events like Wrestlemania onto the service.
“Comcast NBCUniversal is creating an advertising marketplace for an entirely new era, defined by the massive technological and philosophical shifts we’ve seen across our industry this year,” said NBCUniversal chairman of global advertising and partnerships Linda Yaccarino, in a statement. “From broadband to aggregation to streaming, our company not only meets this moment — it was made for it.”
Across the up-front overall, the company says it saw double-digit price and volume increases across all its assets, though it did not give any specific numbers. Some 90 percent of the media buyers have signed on to the company’s automated marketplace, One Platform.
And with the Tokyo Olympics set for later this month, the company says that the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, as well as Super Bowl LVI, are already selling well, with the Super Bowl already 85 percent sold or in discussions. The company is said to be seeking as much as $6 million for a 30 second ad during the big game.
