NBCUniversal said Mark Marshall has been officially named chairman, global advertising and partnerships. 

Marshall has served as interim chairman since his predecessor Linda Yaccarino left to become CEO of Twitter in May. Marshall was forced to step in at the last minute to preside over NBCU’s upfront presentation and sales.

Marshall will report to Mark Lazarus, chairman, NBCUniversal Media Group.

“Mark stepped into this role on an interim basis at one of the most critical times of year for the ad sales business, and over the past three months he has more than proven himself to be the leader NBCU needs to guide this team into the future,” said Lazarus.  “Mark’s relationships are second to none, and coupled with his transformative vision, I have no doubt that under his leadership we will continue to reinvent and innovate the sales business while super-serving our clients and partners.”

Marshall had been president of advertising sales and partnerships at NBCU since 2018. He joined NBCU in 2013.

Before that he was senior VP and national sales manager at Turner Broadcasting.

Mark Marshall, named head of ad sales for NBCUniversal Friday after the sudden departure of his boss Linda Yaccarino, found himself in the spotlight on the stage at Radio City Music Hall Monday and performed like a pro.

He and Yaccarino had been rehearsing together last Thursday when news began to trickle out that Yaccarino was in talks to become CEO of Elon Musk’s Twitter. 

After noting how humbling it was to be on stage representing NBCU, he said he was privileged to work with “some of the best executives anywhere, including Linda.”

Also Read: NBCUniversal Addresses Exec Changes, Writers’ Strike at Upfront Event

“I've heard from so many of you over the past 72 hours and I can't tell you how much that means,” he said. Marshall also thanked mothers in the audience for giving up part of their Mother’s Day to attend.

Then he went into his sales pitch.

“This year is going to be an extremely important year for your business, regardless of category,” he said, counting off the number of auto, pharma and movie launches expected this year.

“This is going to be a very competitive marketplace, which means you need every single impression to work harder than ever,” he said. “In order to do that you first need quality content and content that creates emotion and action for your brand. Not just background noise as you scroll. You need a platform that moves with your audiences to any screen. You need measurements that count correctly and that actually tie your results.”

He joked that that line should have gotten applause, then the audience obliged.

NBCU “provides you with more consumer touchpoints, smart technology, bigger partnerships, all leading to the best impact and sales results for your brands,” he said.

He joked about a glitch with the teleprompter, then delivered the big finish, noting that across NBCU’s portfolio of brands reaches 1 billion people. And when brands use NBCU’s platform to target people who are actually going to buy the products advertised, he said, they see an average sales lift of 16%.

“Let us put the power of NBC Universal to work for all of you,” he said before introducing Nick Jonas, who punctuated what was an entertaining presentation that almost didn’t miss the hand waves and smiles from the actors who sat out this year’s event because of the writers strike.

Between the last minute executive changes and the strike, NBCU’s creative staff led by CMO Josh Feldman managed to  put together a show that entertained the buyers and reminded them that NBCU was still in the business of show biz, with appearances by the anchors of NBC News and Telemundo News, the stars of Telemundo programming and Bravolebrties from various Real Housewives casts on their way to Vegas for the next BravoCon. 

There were fireworks and music with Reba McEntire, a new judge on The Voice, performing before Jonas. An opening number, featuring the foul-mouthed animated bear Ted and a chorus line of dancers also brought down the house.

This week the other networks will also be trying to put on a show without actors and late-night talent and NBCU, hitting leadoff, established a high bar for them to match.

On the eve of NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation Monday, Mark Marshall has been named interim chairman, global advertising and partnerships, replacing Linda Yaccarino, who is leaving NBCU and is Elon Musk's choice to replace him as CEO of Twitter.

Musk at midday confirmed in a tweet that he had hired Yaccarino, She  "will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology," he said. "Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app."

Marshall, who had been president of ad sales and partnerships, will report to Mark Lazarus, chairman, NBCU Television and Streaming.

“We are grateful for Linda Yaccarino’s leadership of NBCUniversal’s Advertising Sales business, and for the innovative team and platform she has built. Linda has made countless contributions to the company during her 12-year tenure, and we wish her the best,” Comcast president Mike Cavanagh said. 

Cavanagh was put in charge of NBCU after Jeff Shell was dismissed for having an inappropriate relationship with a CNBC anchor.

Also Read: NBCUniversal Sees Upfront Market Gathering Strength

“It has been an absolute honor to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” Yaccarino said in a statement. “We’ve transformed our company and the entire industry — and I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished together, and grateful to my colleagues and mentors, especially Brian Roberts, Mike Cavanagh and the entire NBCU leadership team.”

Marshall joined NBCU in 2013, following Yaccarino from Turner Broadcasting System. He was named president at NBCU advertising sales in 2018.

This year’s upfront market was so hot that Comcast’s incipient streaming service Peacock collected $500 million in commitments from advertisers.

Peacock’s haul contributed to a 67% increase in digital and streaming upfront volume to $1.5 billion for NBCUniversal.

Also Read: Roku Finishes Upfront With Double Last Year’s Volume

The shift in viewers to streaming and digital and a move by advertisers to buy more-targeted, cross-platform campaigns made this upfront different than past markets. NBCU said it has been making changes in its ad sales unit to take advantage of those changes with broader offerings across global and local markets, and more technology and automation.

NBCU wasn’t as precise about its upfront results as a whole, saying that overall volume and pricing rose by double digits from last year and topped the record 2019-20 upfront, prior to the 2019-20 season, when upfront volume was nearly $7 billion including the Olympics.

“We’ll have growth in digital and linear overall,” said Mark Marshall, co-president of NBCU Advertising Sales and Partnerships told B+C. “The big growth comes on the digital side of it. But we went into the market knowing we were one of the few places that had capacity.’”

Last month, NBCU CEO Jeff Shell told an investors meeting that NBCU was “pretty much done” with its upfront negotiations. “Our approach allowed us to go out early in the market and take advantage of the strength of the market,” he said.

At this point, all of the broadcasters and most of the cable networks are done with their upfronts.

With ratings down and ad inventory tight around the industry NBCU had big events to offer advertisers, led by the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the World Cup on Telemundo.

NBCU said the Super Bowl was 85% sold or in discussions at this point. “I think there’s a good possibility that we will be sold out of the Super Bowl by the time this season kicks off,” Marshall said  Commercials being sold now are going for more than $6 million, he said. That’s up from top prices of about $5.5 million last year.

In addition to sports, “Peacock was the biggest add of capacity,” Marshall said. “Peacock comes in with broadcast primetime reach over the course of a month, even though it’s only a year old. It was an easy way to slide into the connected TV world.”

The $500 million in upfront ad commitments is up from $100 million last year.

There have been many reports that while Comcast has reported 42 million sign-ups for Peacock, its actual base of customers that use or pay for the service is a fraction of that. But Marshall said that Peacock’s growth represents an “unbelievable transformation of something that didn’t exist 24 months ago.”

Marshall said NBCU expected this year’s upfront market to be exceptionally strong, based in part on the scatter market and also by post-pandemic behavior it was seeing in key categories.

“We absolutely knew that this was going to be this kind of lightning in a bottle year because we’ve never really since World War II just stopped the economy for a year and then flipped it back on,” Marshall said.

Marshall said NBCU identified four categories that would be growing by $1 billion each in entertainment, pharma, tech and auto. On top of that, there was surprising strength in other categories such as restaurants, which were spending two times what they spent in 2019-20, and retail.

Previous upfront reports had prices for broadcast increasing by 19% to 22% for broadcast prime and 9% to 12% for cable. Marshall said that because NBCU was selling its inventory as part of a single platform, “more and more the discussion is around an aggregate number, where you’re looking at the rollup of all the impressions from all the dayparts including digital now.” 

Marshall said that NBCU is selling about the same percentage of its inventory as it has in the past and will be able to take advantage of continuing strength of the scatter market.

“We followed the macro trends in the categories and we had a real good sense of where the markets would be and what the marketplace would look like and partnered with the agencies to make the deals that made sense at the right time,” he said.

With the concentration of the TV business, and the consolidation of advertising sales teams at those companies, a handful of top sales executives now control more than $22 billion in commercial inventory in the cable business.

Most of that inventory will be negotiated and sold over the next few months in the upfront market, determining the financial fates of those companies or the coming year.

Here is a Multichannel News scorecard of the executives responsible for selling cable advertising and what kind of hand they’ll be bringing to market for next season.

Donna Speciale

Title: President, Turner Ad Sales
Company: Turner
2017 Ad Revenue: $4.033 billion**
Outlook: A top media buyer before joining Turner, Speciale has been on a quest to make the television experience better for viewers and Turner’s portfolio of networks more attractive to media buyers. Turner has been among the early movers by cutting commercial clutter at truTV, creating audience-targeting products and building up branded content production studios. She sees her competitors moving in her direction and ad dollars flowing as a result.

Jon Steinlauf

Title: Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer
Company: Discovery Inc.
2017 Ad Revenue: $3.809 billion**
Outlook: Steinlauf, who had been in charge of ad sales at Scripps Networks Interactive, became head of sales for Discovery when the latter company acquired Scripps. The two companies both feature nonfiction programming that is viewed live; as a single company, it will continue to emphasize that advertising works on strongly branded networks because much of it is contextually related to the content, and because fans are receptive to the messages they see in their favorite trusted shows. Discovery’s respected head of sales, Ben Price, will leave after the upfronts.

Sean Moran

Title: Head of Marketing and Partner Solutions
Company: Viacom
2017 Ad Revenue: $3.699 billion**
Outlook: Under Sean Moran, Viacom is looking to build a variety of marketing services that go beyond selling spots. Viacom acquired WhoSay, a social-media influencer marketing company, and VidCon, a place where content creators convene. It has also put together a shopper marketing unit. Viacom expects its Advanced Marketing Services to generate $300 million in revenue this year and that after years of shrinking ad revenue. Viacom forecasts that ad revenues for the fourth fiscal quarter will actually be up.

Laura Molen, Mark Marshall

Titles: Executive VP, Lifestyle and Hispanic Advertising Sales Group, NBCUniversal; Executive VP, Entertainment Advertising Sales, NBCUniversal
2017 Ad Revenue: $3.397 billion**
Outlook: Cable networks are an integral part of NBCUniversal’s expansive television portfolio. Entertainment networks, including USA Network and Syfy, are ratcheting up high-profile programming. USA recently announced a new country-music competition show headlined by Shania Twain and Jake Evans. Its lifestyle networks — Bravo, E!, Oxygen — boast strong connections with consumers that benefit advertisers. With NBCU joining the OpenAP audience-targeting consortium, advertisers will have a broader pool of viewers they can reach using data-driven buying techniques.           

Ed Erhardt

Title: President, Global Sales and Marketing
Company: ESPN
2017 Ad Revenue: $2.609 billion*
Outlook: Live sports events continue to be attractive as on-demand viewing reduces ratings of on-demand programming. That leaves ESPN in a pretty strong position, despite its well-publicized decline in subscribers. Under new president James Pitaro, ESPN continues to position itself as an alternative to primetime for a broader range of products, not just beer and razors, with a large number of women tuning in. In April, ESPN launched its new app and its direct-to-consumer streaming product ESPN+, designed to capture the attention of sports fans and cord cutters and create additional advertising opportunities for sponsors.

Peter Olsen

Title: Executive VP, Advertising Sales
Company: A+E Networks
2017 Ad Revenue: $1.491 billion *
Outlook: At its upfront event in March, Olson promised media buyers that A+E Networks was planning to deliver “no gimmicks, just results.” The company’s networks, led by A&E, History and Lifetime, are doubling down on real-life story telling and it has signed deals with prominent women including Leah Remini, Elizabeth Vargas and Gretchen Carlson. A+E has also been aggressively pressing its work with Data Plus Math, the company getting attention for its attribution platform, which should provide marketers with a scorecard on what media work best and, within TV, which networks and shows really make the cash register ring.

Marianne Gambelli

Title: President, Advertising Sales
Company: Fox News
2017 Ad Revenue: $1.068 billion*
Outlook: With a hurricane of political news blowing across the nation, the category is gaining audiences, and those curious eyeballs are attracting ad dollars from additional advertisers looking for big numbers and live viewing. President Donald Trump’s favorite network has maintained its ranking as the No. 1 cable news channel and viewership is increasing for Fox Business Network. Fox News Channel has also been updating its digital product to attract users and advertisers. With tightly contested midterm elections coming up in November, viewership is expected to rise even more on Fox News and its cable news competitors, all of which will be offering special election-year political news and results packages at premium prices to sponsors.

Scott Collins

Title: President, National Advertising Sales
Company: AMC Networks
2017 Ad Revenue: $960 million**
Outlook: Known best for The Walking Dead, AMC has parlayed owning television’s No. 1 scripted series into big increases in ad rates over the past few years, despite declining viewership for the zombie apocalypse drama. And at a time when “peak TV” conditions are ratcheting up competition for viewers, AMC is doubling down on burnishing its reputation for airing high-quality scripted programming at scale on networks that gladly accept advertising. This year, AMC is also rolling out its data-driven advertising unit, featuring Aurora software that optimizes campaigns across networks.

Ed Georger

Title: Executive VP, Advertising Sales and Digital Media
Company: Crown Media Family Networks
2017 Ad Revenue: $505.9 million *
Outlook: Like the little engine that could, Crown Media’s Hallmark Channels keep increasing viewership with family-friendly and advertiser-safe programming, especially during the fourth-quarter holiday season, which is crucial to a whole range of marketers. Hallmark Channel continues to prosper with its focus on other holidays — Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. — and its support of pet-related projects, including its Kitten Bowl. Crown is producing additional movies for its maturing Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel and, at a time when many are looking for skinnier bundles, is pushing another linear network with Hallmark Drama.

Louis Carr

Title President, Media Sales
Company: BET
2017 Ad Revenue: $313.0 million*
Outlook: With linear ratings rising for the past three quarters, BET has maintained its status as the No. 1 cable network among African-Americans, a title it has held for 17 consecutive seasons. The network continues to emphasize how its viewers are avid consumers in many categories, including movies. BET special events — such as the BET Awards, the Hip Hop Awards and the Soul Train Awards — also pull big numbers. BET is big on social media and digital, and its BET Experience is the prototype in Viacom’s strategy for bringing fans to live events.