NBCUniversal has reached a new advanced advertising agreement with Charter Communications that it said will expand its U.S. addressable footprint by nearly 40% to 45 million households.
The agreement will allow NBCUniversal to sell addressable campaigns on its own inventory across Charter’s Spectrum platforms and will let advertising and agency partners dynamically insert ads by using aggregated and de-identified data.
The integration across Charter's Spectrum VOD is scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2021.
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"Viewing habits have been evolving for some time now and continue to accelerate towards on-demand and streaming platforms. Advertisers need to meet viewers in the moment, and that's why NBCUniversal has been laser-focused on expanding our addressable capabilities," said Krishan Bhatia, president and chief business officer of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, in a statement. "Through our partnership with Charter Communications, we are taking an important step forward by delivering targeted advertising to millions of Spectrum viewers who are watching video on demand. This will enable us to continue to connect our viewers to the brands they know and love, at any time of the day."
David Kline, president of Spectrum Reach, Charter’s advertising sales division, said the deal should make NBCU networks more impactful to advertisers and help bring scale and accessibility to addressable TV.
NBCUniversal has been offering ad targeting solutions to client and agency partners through its AdSmart platform since 2015. AdSmart is NBCUniversal’s data-driven offering that provides a suite of advanced advertising capabilities.
In 2019, Comcast, Charter and Cox formed a new initiative called On Addressability focused on building a “sound, scalable and sustainable addressable” advertising solution for television. In 2020, AMC Networks signed on.
“We launched the On Addressability initiative last year because as MVPDs, we are responsible for delivering ads into viewers’ households. Enabling addressable TV has to begin with the content distributors who lay the groundwork and set up the infrastructure,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of Comcast Advertising, in a statement. “Programmers have the largest amount of inventory, however, and we need their participation to achieve scale. AMC Networks’ decision to partner with On Addressability is important for the industry and the start of what we believe is a growing trend.”