Comcast’s Universal Ads looks to attract SMBs by simplifying TV
At the Consumer Electronic Show this week, Comcast announced Universal Ads, a new cross-industry ad solution aimed at allowing advertisers big and small to buy against premium video “as easily as they buy from social media platforms”.
Launch partners include A&E, AMC Networks, DirecTV, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Roku, TelevisaUnivision, Warner Bros Discovery and Xumo. They will allow their inventory to be accessible via Universal Ads.
Comcast hinted more partners will be announced “in the coming months”. With its current partners, Comcast claims advertisers can reach over 90% of US households.
The solution will launch in the US during Q1. It is built on top of Comcast FreeWheel’s adtech stack.
Comcast executive James Grant will lead the initiative as general manager. James Borow, a former Snap, Reddit and Discord advisor, will lead Universal Ads’ product and engineering teams.
James Rooke, president of Comcast Advertising, said the platform has been “purpose-built in response to what advertisers have been asking from Comcast. That is, to make TV simpler to buy, scale and measure in a way that is compatible with the needs of performance marketers and, really, all marketers”.
He added: “Comcast has tremendous assets across tech, media and data. Universal Ads brings those assets together in a way that has never been done before. And, just as importantly, we are thrilled that our partners, many of whom are already FreeWheel clients, have signed on to join us in this initiative, as we seek to transform the TV ad marketplace of the future.”
Analysis: Chasing the long tail
The need to simplify TV buying was repeatedly highlighted at last month’s The Future of TV Advertising Global event, which was kicked off by a presentation from Rooke pleading for the TV industry to borrow from the “Big Tech playbook” to better compete for adspend.
“The process of TV is too difficult,” he argued. “The big tech platforms make it easy. And easy matters.”
‘Embrace simplicity’: Why TV needs to borrow from Big Tech’s playbook
Rooke added that creating simplified, always-on, full-funnel performance measurement will be necessary to increase TV’s competitiveness. “The TV ecosystem needs to be able to not just prove its worth but do it at pace,” he said. “If it’s too slow, it doesn’t matter.”
His main argument was echoed by the rest of the two-day conference, with broadcasters, media agency representatives and analysts in general consensus that TV needs to make it easier for more brands to buy ads.
NBCUniversal’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, Mark Marshall, argued that many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are looking to move up the funnel as they discover diminishing returns on tech platforms — and TV needs to take advantage.
“Why the platforms have seen quicker growth is they have built a system — whether it’s perfectly viable or not — that shows where there is ROI for their investment,” Marshall said. “TV — we have not done as great of a job at that. And that’s part of what we’re working on.”
By looking to attract SMB investment, the wider TV industry will join a number of tech platforms that have committed to chasing the long tail of advertisers in order to grow their businesses and compete with tech giants such as Meta, Google and Amazon. These include Reddit, Snap and Pinterest.
Leaning in to AI ads
Through Universal Ads, Comcast has signalled that not only does it want to make buying ads easier, it also wants to create them.
Like social media platforms, which have spent the past year releasing AI performance and creative tools for advertisers, Comcast plans to offer “free, automated AI creative production of TV commercials” as part of Universal Ads.
Additionally, Universal Ads will include a marketing API to allow developers to build additional applications, including for creative generation and measurement.
“The biggest mistake TV has made is acting like it’s still 1995,” commented Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia. “SMBs want in and they deserve to be in. The same way social democratised advertising, TV needs to drop the barriers and let brands of all sizes play at scale.”
Are AI ads the future of TV? With ITV’s Jason Spencer and Alan Hall
Comcast is not the first TV broadcaster to lean in to generative AI to reduce production costs for SMBs. In September, ITV became the first UK broadcaster to create spots for these smaller advertisers using generative AI throughout the creative process.
While such use of AI has prompted questions over the effectiveness and quality of ads, as well as how the creative industry might be impacted by technological advancement, reducing production costs is likely a necessity to ensure more SMBs are able to take advantage of the TV inventory on offer via Universal Ads.