NBCU ads chairman: Don’t reward agencies for cost mitigation
The Future of TV Advertising Global
“We have to stop compensating agencies on cost mitigation. It is actually hurting your brands.”
Mark Marshall, NBCUniveral’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, made a plea to marketers at The Future of TV Advertising Global 2024 to stop evaluating media buys and agency success on lowering costs rather than other measures of effectiveness.
Speaking with UM UK CEO Kara Osborne, Marshall equated the behaviour to a real estate investor paying an architect solely on how cheaply they could build something, rather than whether the building was safe and high-quality.
“That is what is happening,” said Marshall. “I’m not saying that just selfishly because I’d like to charge more. […] It holds us back from innovating, it holds us back from better ROI and it holds the brand back from actual growth.”
However, he also admitted that TV needs to do more to demonstrate value to advertisers. This is especially true as premium video offers strength as a “middle of the funnel” option, which has become increasingly important as big brands seek to address the lower funnel and new-to-TV small and medium-sized enterprises look to invest in the upper funnel.
“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. TV — we have not done as great of a job at that. And that’s part of what we’re working on.”
Linear’s strength
In contrast to NBCU’s British counterparts, whose leaders have repeatedly admitted linear is a shrinking market, Marshall explained how the broadcaster still sees strong value in its linear properties, such as NBC’s Today morning show and live sports.
NBCU still retains an audience of 41m viewers every day, he revealed.
Marshall added that he believes consumers “miss that communal viewing” in an era of streaming, hence live sports becoming increasingly important for NBCU.
“It’s the one shortfall of streaming — and typically entertainment series streaming. It’s more of a solo experience,” he said. “And that solo experience is a bit isolating. You want to feel like you’re in a community.”
Advertisers have seemingly taken note. NBCU saw 87% growth in the number of sports advertisers in 2024 compared with the year before. Meanwhile, Marshall said ads against live programming perform 21% better than ads against on-demand content.
Peacock lessons
That aside, Marshall expressed excitement at the performance of Peacock, NBCU’s streaming service, which launched in the US and UK in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
“When we did launch Peacock, it was unique in that a lot of people were running to SVOD [subscription VOD] at that point and we were very proudly standing with the advertisers and building this for and with the advertisers,” said Marshall.
He added coyly: “Other companies, on earnings calls, may have said they wouldn’t want to burden their viewers with advertising. They may be in advertising now.”
Peacock launched its ad-supported tier with only five minutes of ads per hour — something that Marshall declared has led to “outstanding” ad performance. Meanwhile, in Q3, the service registered more than 100m monthly active users, implying a degree of consumer satisfaction.
Just as importantly, Marshall said the ad innovation possible through streaming has meant NBCU can take learnings from Peacock and apply them to linear.
No walled garden
Similarly, Peacock has helped unlock the power of first-party data for NBCU.
The broadcaster will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2026 and Marshall acknowledged that “for the first 95 years, the only real feedback we got was Nielsen ratings. We got no first-party data back until we launched Peacock”.
Now, with Peacock, NBCU can understand at a granular level how programming and ads are resonating with audiences, providing lessons for ad effectiveness.
That said, Marshall was clear: “What we don’t want to do is build our own walled garden.”
Instead, he insisted that TV measurement must be an industry-wide endeavour.
“Currency and measurement need to be partnered as an industry,” Marshall argued. “But from a tech and first-party data perspective, that’s where you want to have your own unique offerings in the marketplace.”