NBCUniversal's record-setting sales of advertising during the Paris Summer Olympics gave the overall ad market a boost in June, according to the latest figures from ad tracking company Guideline.

Even though the Olympics were on for only five days in July, ad spending was up 14% from a year ago, with spending on the Paris Games accounting for 43% of the increase. 

Excluding Olympic spending, overall ad spending would have been up 8%, which Guideline says marks the 15th consecutive month of ad market growth.

For national TV, spending was up 10% in July including the Olympics. Excluding the Olympics, national TV would have been down 7% for the month.

Digital also got a boost from the Olympics, with spending up 18% in July, compared to 15% without Paris.

NBCU has said that Olympic ad revenue hit record levels. Its last estimate was that spending was $1.2 billion, exceeding the COVID-delayed 2021 Tokyo Summer Games, but because of high ratings, NBC was able to sell inventory it had reserved for make-goods had viewership fallen short of estimates.

Guideline said it expects the Olympics to have an even larger impact in August. The Olympics concluded on August 11.

Guideline draws its ad spending data directly from computer invoices from the major media-buying agencies.

NBCUniversal accumulated 2.8 million signups for Peacock during the recently completed Paris Summer Olympics, averaging 398,000 enlistments a day during the first week of the Games, a 5.6 times increase vs. the previous eight weeks, according to research company Antenna. 

The performance compares to the 3 million Peacock sign-ups measured by Antenna when the platform exclusively hosted an NFL AFC Wild Card playoff matchup in January between the eventual Super Bowl Champions Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins. 

Some of those customers ended up churning away quickly, with Peacock reporting a loss of around 500,000 subscribers in the second quarter. 

Also read: Peacock’s Wild Card Weekend Resulted in the Biggest ‘Measured Signup Moment’ Ever, Research Company Claims

Antenna also measured 3.4 million signups for Paramount Plus just before and during the Super Bowl in February. 

On average, Peacock has commanded 16% share of premium SVOD gross customer additions over the prior 12 months. In July 2024, Peacock drew 29% share of all gross additions in the category, Antenna said. 

TV usage grew 2.3% in July as people started tuning in to watch the Paris Olympics on NBC and Peacock, according to Nielsen.

Led by Peacock, which jumped 33%, streaming’s share of TV usage climbed to 41.4%, its largest share ever, and the largest share ever for streaming, broadcast or cable since Nielsen began issuing monthly updates.

Peacock was not the only streaming service with a big July. YouTube became the first streamer to register a share of more than 10%.

HIstorically, with the broadcast networks in reruns, July has not been a big month for TV usage. But it has usually been a month in which streaming’s share increased.

But the Paris Olympics were a very big deal, with the top five–and seven of the top 10--telecasts in the month. 

In addition to increasing its share from 40.3% in June, total streaming usage increased by 5%.

YouTube was the top streamer with a 10.4% share in the month, up from 9.9% in June.

Netflix had an 8.4% share unchanged from June; Prime Video share share was 3.4%, up from 3.1%; Hulu had a 2.7% share, down from 3%; Disney Plus’ share grew to 2.1% from 2%; Tubi also had a 2.1% share, up from 2%; The Roku Channel’s share was 1.6% compared to 1.5%; Peacock’s share jumped to 1.5% from 1.2%; Max had a 1.4% share, unchanged; Paramount Plus had a 1.1% share, unchanged  and Pluto TV’s share was 0.7% down form 0.8% in June.

Max’s House of the Dragon was the biggest streaming show with 4.7 billion viewing minutes, followed by Bluey on Disney Plus, which had a record month in terms of share. The Boys had 4.2 billion viewing minutes, boosting Prime Video. In addition to the Olympics, Peacock had a hot show in Love Island.

Streaming had 10 titles that exceeded 1 billion viewing minutes and four of the top 10 days for streaming took place in July.

The Olympics brought NBC an average of 10 million viewers on July 28. For the month, broadcast had a 20.3% share, down from 20.5% in June. Broadcast viewing in July was up 5% from a year ago, when it was at a record low.

Cable usage in July was even with June, but its share dipped to 26.7% from 27/2%. The Republican National Convention and coverage ofthe shooting of former President Trump boosted cable news by 23% compared to June.

The Paris Summer Olympics were big.

NBCUniversal said primetime Olympics coverage — on both Paris time (2 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET) and U.S. time (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) — averaged a Total Audience Delivery of 30.6 million viewers across all platforms, up 82% from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021.

Led by Peacock, NBCU streamed 23.5 billion minutes of Olympic programming, up 40% from all previous summer and winter games combined. In primetime, Peacock averaged 4.1 million viewers daily.

“Our NBCUniversal team matched the occasion of this transformative Paris Olympics, presenting peerless coverage in daytime and primetime across all platforms, including the NBC broadcast network, which once again was home to the most-watched night of television for 17 consecutive days,” NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus said.

“The Games marked a groundbreaking moment for Peacock, which delivered a flawless user experience and cutting-edge innovation while shattering all-time Olympics streaming records,“ Lazarus said. “USA Network went around the clock and ranked No. 1 in cable sports and entertainment for the past two weeks. Telemundo Deportes provided extensive Spanish-language coverage. NBC News broadcast from on location in Paris and dominated the competition, while our owned-stations and affiliates had soaring local news ratings. 

“We sold more advertising for the Paris Olympics than for any other Games, and we delivered for all of our partners,“ Lazarus added. “Parks and Studios received unmatched promotion, as the ‘halo effect’ boosted all of our businesses. The Paris Olympics was as exciting as we could have hoped, and we can’t wait to work with our partners at the IOC and USOPC in Milan-Cortina in ’26 and LA28.”

LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant leading the U.S. men’s basketball team over France in the final game at the Paris Summer Olympics brought NBC and Peacock the biggest ratings for a gold medal game since 1996.

Overall ratings for the Olympics have bounced back from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Summer Games, reinvigorating the international competition as a premier television event.

The gold medal game averaged 19.5 million viewers on Saturday afternoon and its tight finish peaked at 22.7 million, according to total audience stats cobbled together by from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

The game ranked as the most-streamed event of the Paris Olympics across NBCU digital platforms, with an average minute audience of 2.7 million viewers.

Also Read: NBCU Claims Ad Revenue Gold Medal for Paris Olympics

The U.S. men weren’t the only ones drawing big numbers.

On Saturday morning, the U.S. women’s soccer team won gold in with a 1-0 victory over Germany. The contest drew about 9 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. That was the most-watched gold-medal soccer match since the Athens Games in 2004.

Coverage of the Olympics on Saturday across NBC, Peacock and other NBCU platforms drew a Total Audience Delivery of 30.7 million viewers. That compares to 11.7 million viewers for the last Saturday of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Since the opening ceremony, NBC has averaged 31.3 million viewers for primetime in Paris and the U.S., up 82%  from Tokyo.

NBCUniversal’s strategy of making all Paris Summer Olympics events available live is paying off with unexpectedly high daytime viewing.

While that’s good news for the Comcast-owned broadcaster, it might not be great for other businesses. That’s because office productivity is down among Olympic viewers.

During a Thursday press briefing, NBCU said Tuesday’s early-afternoon coverage of women’s gymnastics averaged nearly 13 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, while Sunday’s 11:15 a.m. U.S.-Serbia men’s basketball game attracted 11 million viewers.

“I think where we’re pleasantly surprised that daytime viewership has been as high as it has been particularly on the weekdays,“ NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said. “It’s a point of work from home or summer. But that’s something that I don’t think has really happened in the past. 

“It’s great to see in the afternoon, Paris Prime, as we’ve called it, where we’ve seen enormous numbers,” he added. “Our strategy of making everything available live in the afternoon with fully produced, prime-time quality productions across our widest platforms, the biggest events, it’s something we’ve never done before.”

Also Read: NBCU Claims Ad Revenue Gold Medal for Paris Olympics

NBCU did some research and found that one in four Olympics viewers said their work productivity declined during the Olympics, said Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of NBC Olympics Production.

On top of that two in three people said the Olympics provide an escape, and half said they’ve changed their daily routine to to watch the Games.

“America is captivated and there’s a lack of productivity in a lot of workplaces and we’re here, ready for it,” Solomon said. “We set the goal early on to make sure that America is unproductive all day long.”

The daytime viewing doesn’t appear to be hurting primetime, where NBC is averaging 34 million viewers across all platforms, up 79% from Tokyo. 

“if you look at it as a whole, approximately two-thirds of our viewership has come in prime time even though all the action happened live during the day,” Cordella noted. “And Peacock has been a huge part of that viewership. You’ve seen numbers in our press releases, on the competition days we’re regularly hitting 5 million streaming viewers. And they’re coming from everything for everything from live events to live shows, like Gold Zone and more.

So far Peacock has accumulated more than 5 billion streaming minutes during the Olympics. 

“Clearly, the Olympics are back,” said Mark Lazarus, chairman, NBCU Media Group.

He noted that the success of the Olympics has created a halo effect for NBCU.

Also Read: NBCU’s Olympic Opening Ceremony Audience Jumps 60% to 28.6 Million

“The rest of our company is also benefiting in a very big way,” Lazarus said. “The Today show, Nightly News, both broadcasting from here in Paris, have been ranked No. 1 each day, and they’re showing big advantages over their closest competitor.”

The executives said it was too early to tell if the Paris model would be deployed again when the Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028.

“Every time you have an Olympics, you get a new time zone, a new puzzle, really, to put together,“ Solomon said. “And we’ve gone back in time to remind ourselves that in America, it doesn’t matter if they know the results. They want to know the stories of the athletes and how it played out.

“And so that’s why the primetime shows, I think, are resonating,” she said. “You can watch live in the afternoon if you’re a sports fan and want a quick hit of it. But when you come back in primetime, you get to see how it all happens.”

NBCUniversal said it has already garnered record Olympic advertising revenue for the Paris Summer Olympics.

Only four days into the competition, NBCU said it has surpassed the record $1.25 billion in revenue generated during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

The company said more advertisers are participating in the Paris Olympics than were involved in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games and the Tokyo Games combined. 

It said 70% of the advertisers in the 2024 games are first-timers, with those new sponsors spending a total of nearly $500 million.

Digital ad revenue is more than doubling the take from Tokyo in 2021, NBCU added.

Also Read: NBCU Plans Commercial-Free Hour During Olympic Opening Ceremonies

NBCU continues to sell advertising as ratings meet expectations, enabling the company to release inventory reserved for make-good ads and a continuing stream of programmatic sales.

“We are proud to have secured the highest Olympic and Paralympic advertising in the history of the Games, and are grateful to our advertisers for their partnership,” Mark Marshall, chairman, global advertising and partnerships at NBCU, said. “Together, we have innovated the advertising experience with authentic and inspirational creative that is leaving a lasting impact on consumers.”

NBCUniversal said the opening ceremony for the Paris Summer Olympics had a Total Audience of 28.6 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, which is a rebound from the low ratings from the COVID-delayed Tokyo Games.

NBCU had been expecting ratings to be better than Tokyo and the audience was 60% higher than the disappointing 2021 Summer Games. 

The viewership also topped the colorful 2018 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics by 8%, but fell just short of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. 

NBCU had another 666,000 for its Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo Deportes.

In terms of streaming, Peacock had more than 2.5 million viewers for the opening Ceremonies. Streaming of all Olympic content topped 1 billion minutes through Friday — six times the total for the Tokyo Olympics.

Also Read: Full Coverage of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics 

No word on how many people signed up for Peacock to stream the Olympics.

“Last night’s opening ceremony, one of the most ambitious and complex in Olympic history, was a spectacle for those in attendance in Paris, delivered a huge audience across our NBCU platforms, and set records for Peacock,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said. “Thanks to the tireless effort of our production and engineering teams, and extensive promotion, we are off to a strong start that is in line with the expectations of our NBC stations, and distribution and advertising partners. We are in great position as we look forward to the next two weeks of competition.”

NBCU’s Total Audience Delivery is based upon live-plus-same-day custom Fast National figures from Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics. Official viewership will be available on Monday.

Brands advertising in the opening ceremony generated 320% greater search volume than brands in the Tokyo opening ceremony, NBCU said.

Matt Iseman is one of the hosts on Gold Zone, the “whip-around” live program on Peacock covering the Paris Summer Olympics. NBC said Gold Zone “will present viewers with the best and most compelling moments happening at any time.” 

Iseman, a host on American Ninja Warrior, pairs with Jac Collinsworth on the Olympics show, the duo handling a four-hour morning shift. Scott Hanson and Andrew Siciliano are hosts as well. Iseman previously covered the Olympics in Beijing in 2022, which had empty venues due to the pandemic, and Tokyo in 2020, which had even more empty venues. 

While he’ll be working on Gold Zone from the NBC Sports facility in Connecticut, Iseman is psyched for fans to be at the Olympic venues in Paris, cheering on the athletes. “We’re excited for this to be the first real post-pandemic Olympics where the fans are going to be there, the families are going to be there,“ he said. “I think the performances are going to be more electric.”   

He spoke with B+C about Gold Zone, what he’s most looking forward to in Paris, and if the Olympics ever might feature a Ninja Warrior-esque event. An edited transcript follows. 

B+C: Describe the concept of a whip-around show.

Matt Iseman: If anyone’s watched football on Sunday and seen the RedZone channel, essentially we’re just going to go to the biggest events, we’re going to go where the best action is. There are 396 medal events being contested over the 17 days and sometimes there'll be up to 40 events going on. 

If it's Simone Biles on vault, we're going there. If it's Noah Lyles running the 100-meter semis, we’re going there. We’re trying to find where’s the biggest action, where’s the most stakes going on, and take you to that action. 

NBC has seen how people are more in charge of their viewing now. So they’re saying, alright, we're going to air every event through Peacock, through USA, through all the parallel networks — everything will be going live somewhere. But I think the easiest choice will be, I can't track the schedule, I don't know what’s going on, let me just go to Gold Zone and know that they’re going to be taking me to the best stuff going on at any time. 

B+C: You're paired up with Jac Collinsworth [son of Cris Collinsworth, Sunday Night Football analyst]. Do you have any history with Jac?

MI: None. But I’ve watched him a ton. I've seen the stuff he's been doing around Sunday Night Football with NBC and I love his personality. He’s done play-by-play for Notre Dame. He's obviously grown up in the sports world. 

One thing that I bring is a lot of enthusiasm, and I think Jac brings that as well. We just met on a Zoom call a couple of days ago and I felt like we clicked immediately.

B+C: Of the different Olympics you've covered, do you have one memory that stands out in your mind?

MI: At the Tokyo Olympics, we had Laurie Hernandez, who was part of the Rio gold medal team [2016] and a teammate of Simone Biles, and she was our gymnast expert. I’ve done a ton of stuff with Laura already on Ninja Junior, and just adore her. We’re sitting there and we're watching Simone on the vault and in the air, and Lori just slaps the table and was like, something’s wrong. You don't do a jump like that. There’s something wrong. And that was when Simone realized she had the twisties. [The twisties sees a gymnast lose their sense of where their body is in space.]

Laurie immediately got on the phone with [former Olympian gymnast] Aly Raisman and they started talking like, could it be the twisties? No way. This is crazy! 

It was insane to be there at what was the biggest story in the Olympics for the U.S., and see how Simone, the greatest to ever do it, you realize she’s human. And I thought it was really great to be there with an expert like Laurie, who was her teammate. 

B+C: We’ve got breakdancing, or breaking, in the Paris Olympics. Can you see a day when some Ninja Warrior-esque competition enters the Olympics?

MI: For 2028 in L.A., the modern pentathlon is being modified and one of the categories they’re going to have is obstacle course. It's supposedly going to be a Ninja Warrior-type obstacle course that will be a part of the modern pentathlon, which I think would be the baby step. 

I would love to see it in there. The show just got picked up for season 17, which is incredible. And what we’ve seen is, it has become a sport. There are kids who grow up not playing football or baseball or soccer, but they are Ninja Warriors and it's reflected in the skill of these young athletes. 

It’s continuing to grow and it’s doing it around the world. So it’s not too far off before Ninja becomes an Olympic sport. 

I would love it!

NBCUniversal said it will have a commercial-free hour during its live coverage of the historic opening ceremony of the Paris Summer Olympics on the River Seine.

The uninterrupted hour will start at 1:30 p.m. on Friday with sponsors Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Eli Lilly, Toyota, Visa and Comcast’s Xfinity brand each acknowledged as sponsors for 10 minutes.

The sponsors will be mentioned by NBC and Peacock commentators and their logos will be displayed on screen.

Unlike past Olympics, when the opening ceremony centers on a parade of athletes inside a stadium, in Paris thousands of athletes from 200 countries will float down the Seine in a four-mile-long flotilla of nearly 90 boats. It is supposed to be a spectacular scene, watched from the shores by millions of spectators.

Dan Lovinger, president, Olympic & Paralympic Partnerships atNBCUniversal. told Broadcasting+Cable that when Molly Solomon, the executive producer for NBC’s Olympic coverage, got a first look at the run of show for the opening ceremony, she said, “We’re not going to want to break away.”

NBCU went to the ring-holder sponsors of its Olympic coverage, official sponsors with the right to place their logos alongside the Olympic rings and other trademarks, and they agreed to the commercial-free arrangement as part of their overall ad packages.

“They’re going to get a lot of exposure, but we’re never going to leave the action,“ Lovinger said. “It will be a spectacle like nothing else,” he said, noting that opportunities like this show that “there are real tangible benefits to being a ring holder.”

"At The Coca-Cola Company, we believe in the real magic that can happen when the world comes together, so being a part of this spectacular presentation of the Opening Ceremony on NBC is a tremendous opportunity to celebrate and share those unifying and inspiring moments,” Coca-Cola North America VP, integrated marketing Robin Triplett said. “We’re proud of our 96-year-long relationship with the Olympic Movement and look forward to bringing our portfolio of brands to fans throughout the Olympic Games Paris 2024.” 

The Paris Olympics have generated more than $1.2 billion in advertising revenue, a record for NBCU and its parent Comcast.

Coverage of the opening ceremonies will be hosted by NBC Olympics primetime host Mike Tirico, alongside Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning. NBC Sports’ Maria Taylor will be on the Team USA boat, while Today hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb will cover the ceremony from a bridge along the route. 

Opening ceremony reporters include Melissa Stark and Andrea Joyce, who will report from the red carpet. 

Award-winning director Thomas Jolly is the artistic director for the opening ceremony. 

The Olympics are always a big deal, but NBCUniversal’s telecast of the Paris Summer Games is going to be très grand.

Big in terms of spectacle, starting with the opening ceremony on the River Seine on Friday. Big in terms of 5,000 hours shown on broadcast, cable and streaming. Big in terms of viewers.

That has NBCU going for the gold, having surpassed a record $1.2 billion months ago.

At a time when linear television ratings have shrunk, the Olympics are a prime example that sports can still draw big audiences. 

NBCU is leaving nothing to chance. It is capping a long campaign headlined by non-Olympic stars like Paris Hllton, Snoop Dogg, Peyton Manning, Megan Thee Stallion, Lily Collins, Cardi B, SZA and Sabrina Carpenter with Olympics Week, where all of the company’s assets will promote the Paris Games.

The final push starts with daily events and integrations on Today and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. On Wednesday, the U.S Army Band will salute Today hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb as they leave New York to broadcast from Paris. 

On Tuesday, America’s Got Talent will open with beach volleyball players Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng passing the Olympic torch to AGT host Terry Crews and the show’s judges. Skier Lindsay Vonn will appear on the Password season finale on Wednesday and gymnast Laurie Hernandez will be among the guests on The Kelly Clarkson Show. 

Access Hollywood will broadcast from Paris for five nights, offering an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at rehearsals for the opening ceremony.

French Food on the Plaza

For the final sprint to the finish, NBC will mount physical activations, bringing the Olympic experience to people in person, starting with turning New York’s Rockefeller Center into an Olympic plaza with athlete visits, French food and watch parties.

For advertisers, the Olympics offer an oasis during the summer, when high-rated sports programming dries up with the NFL and NBA on vacation.

In that environment, “the Olympics are the closest thing to a Super Bowl for 18 straight days,” Horizon Media senior VP, integrated investment, sports Adam Schwartz said.

Schwartz thinks ratings will be a lot better than they were for the COVID-19 delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021, which averaged 15.6 million viewers per night.

Ratings for Paris might also top the 2016 Rio de Janiero Summer Olympics, which drew an average of 27 million primetime viewers and could compete with the 2012 London Games, which averaged 31.1 million viewers on NBC.

“During a very contentious time in a country that’s divided because of politics, if there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s rooting for Team USA,” Schwartz added.

The games should also give Peacock a boost, Schwartz said. During the last Olympics, some viewers complained that Peacock’s coverage was difficult to navigate. NBCU promises that has been fixed, he said. 

Peacock’s Paris

Following the first streaming-only NFL playoff game earlier this year, viewers have learned how to subscribe to Peacock when there’s something on they need to watch, even if they dropped their subscription afterwards, he said. Peacock added 3 million subscribers, thanks to the playoff game.

“I’m sure signups will increase significantly over the course of the games,”  Schwartz said.

Natalie Bastian, global chief marketing officer at ad tech company Teads, is predicting unprecedented engagement during this year’s Olympics. 

The Teads Media Barometer, which collects contextual signals, has registered a huge uptick in interest in the Olympics over the last eight to 10 months, Bastian said.

The Olympics is benefiting from broader consumer trends, including interest in women’s sports spurred by the Caitlin Clark effect. Even the controversy surrounding Clark being excluded from Team USA has enhanced the halo effect surrounding women's sports, she said.

Speaking of women, 8% of the chatter around the Olympics concerns the return of gold medal gymnast Simone Biles, boosted by a new Netflix documentary, Bastian said. 

“The people who are interested in that are not just female,” she said. “It’s across the gamut, men and women, and across all age groups.”

With bold-faced names going for the gold, “whether they’re making a comeback like Simone or doing their closing lap like [men’s basketball star] LeBron [James], that's going to drive record viewership,” Bastian said.

That’s good news for NBCU and its parent company Comcast.

“We will deliver more revenue than we ever had,” said Dan Lovinger, president, Olympic and Paralympic sales at NBCU. 

In April, NBCU said it had already booked an Olympics-record $1.2 billion in advertising sales and Lovinger declined to update that figure.

Explosive Digital Growth

“We’ll see explosive growth digitally and our linear revenue will likely grow as well,” Lovinger said.

Despite the heightened expectations, Lovinger said, NBC hasn’t raised its audience estimates for Paris. “We’ve been fairly bullish from the beginning,” he said. 

NBCU sets aside a certain amount of inventory to ensure that if ratings are below expectations, advertisers will get make-good ads in the games. If ratings are higher than expected, NBCU would be able to sell those spots.

As demand has strengthened, NBCU has also added more programming hours and capacity on Peacock. 

“We think this will allow us to continue selling through the games,” Lovinger said. “Once we see the ratings for the first couple of days, we’ll know for sure.”

With more programming on streaming and digital platforms, NBCU is doing business with smaller advertisers who can’t afford to pony up the tens of millions it would take to be an official sponsor and have commercials in NBC primetime or when all eyes are on Simone Biles or LeBron James as they go for the gold.

Buyers said commercials in high-profile primetime events cost anywhere from $750,000 to $1.25 million, depending on the advertiser and their package. But for this Olympics, smaller advertisers can get into the games for a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

Lovinger said that NBCU will have at least twice as many advertisers participating in the Paris games compared to Tokyo.

With much of the programming streaming, “Peacock gives us a lot of new tools from an ad-tech perspective,” he said, including audience targeting.

A wider array of advertisers than in the past will be able to buy Olympic inventory because for the first time, NBCU is making Olympic commercials available via programmatic technology, working with The Trade Desk.

Lovinger said NBCU tested programmatic selling of biddable inventory within sports programming during the Olympic Trials.

Winning Bids

NBC established a minimum price for available inventory on Peacock and allowed advertisers to make bids. “We actually saw double-digit growth over our floor for the inventory that we put in play,” Lovinger said.

Lovinger said that the systems established by the Trade Desk and NBCU enabled the companies to ensure programmatic buys didn’t violate promises of category exclusivity made to other advertisers via an artificial intelligence video-scanning system to alert human sales staffers of possible conflicts.

NBCU is selling ads in social content that will appear on a wider-than-ever array of platforms. To feed social media content, NBC is bringing influencers to Paris and giving them behind-the-scenes access they wouldn’t have been able to get on their own, according to Lovinger. Some of them will report on food, fashion and other Paris attractions that would be of interest, particularly to younger people.

There will also be snackable highlight packages on social media that NBCU will be able to monetize through deals with those platforms.

In addition to generating revenue, the social activity is designed to drive people to the main course of Olympic programming on NBC and Peacock, Lovinger said.

Big advertisers who have become official Olympic Ring sponsors have worked with NBCU to pull out the stops during the game.

Flying With ‘Top Chef’

Last year, Delta sponsored an episode of Top Chef on NBCU’s Bravo that features Olympic and Paralympic athletes cooking under the Eiffel Tower. More recently, the airline’s CEO Ed Bastian was on the Today show, giving away a trip to Paris. During the games, Delta will sponsor the Gold Zone, a new channel on Peacock that will whip around to the day’s most exciting events.

(Paris is a prime destination for Delta, but the Olympics are depressing travel to the city, resulting in a $100 million drop in revenue for the airline, Bastian said this month on CNBC.)

Also Read: Google Signs Up With NBCU as Search Sponsor for U.S. Olympic Team

Schwartz said that research backs up the value of advertising during the Olympics. “Viewers are very engaged and tend to be very loyal to some of the brands that pop up there,” he said. “During the summer, you just don’t get the mass reach you can get with the Olympics anywhere else.”

Advertisers are benefitting from NBCU’s promotional efforts.

Jenny Storms, chief marketing officer, entertainment and sports for NBCUniversal, said her group tore up its playbook when approaching how to promote the Olympics.

“It comes around once every four years, and the world changes in four years,“ Storms said. “So we have to treat it like it’s new every single time.”

Research conducted by NBCU found that 30% of people said celebrities sparked conversations. That led to the celebrity-focused Olympics coverage.

The promotion was a concerted effort across the whole company, Storms said. If Peyton Manning was featured in a promotion, the Hall of Fame quarterback wound up being part of the opening ceremonies. Similarly, Snoop Dogg will be featured in primetime.

Until recently, none of the promotions involved paid media. But in the last few weeks, a robust round of paid media was added, focusing on older women and younger men. The result was big record ratings for the Olympic trials.

Word’s Been Spread

“I doubt there anyone out there that doesn’t know the Olympics are coming,” Storms said. “Our efforts have been surgical about hitting everyone.”

As a professional, Storm said she’s not a fan of family research — hearing how friends and relatives react to her work. 

But she couldn’t help being cheered by the reaction to a promo that dropped this month featuring Sabrina Carpenter and her song “Espresso.” In the promo, Carpenter is in a Paris cafe, telling a bluebird how excited she is about the Olympics. Turns out, the bird is in her imagination and the waiters in the cafe decide she’s had too much espresso.

Rick Cordella, NBC Sports president, and Molly Solomon, executive producer and president, NBC Olympics production, both rave about how much their daughters loved the Carpenter content. Other colleagues related how their kids were doing Olympic activities in summer camp.

Olympic athletes are reacting to the promotion as well.

Last year, NBC aired promos featuring Megan Thee Stallion talking about the “Ahh-lympics.”

During the recent Olympic trails, Jordan Chiles talked about how excited she was to earn a spot on the U.S. gymnastics team, adding: “This was for you uncle and Megan. I’m going to the Ahh-Lympiics.” 

Megan Thee Stallion responded by sending flowers to Chiles.

“We had no idea she was going to do that,” Storm said. “But what it says to us is wow our promotion really resonated with a young Olympian, who brought it to life and finished the story.”

NBCUniversal said that Google has signed up as the official search AI partner for the U.S. Olympic Team and will be a part of NBCU’s coverage of the Paris Olympics.

As part of the deal, viewers will be able to follow comedian Leslie Jones, NBCU’s Chief Superfan Commentator, as she follows Team USA and the Olympic Games with the help of Gemini, Google’s creative collaborator and AI assistant. Jones will use Gemini to come up with ways to entertain and share knowledge with fans across NBCU’s networks and Peacock.

NBCUniversal has also created “Explain the Games,” which will showcase Google Search’s AI Overviews and be used by NBCUniversal’s production team and commentators during daytime and primetime coverage. NBCUniversal commentators will demonstrate how AI Overviews in Google Search can help viewers explore and understand their questions about the Olympic and Paralympic Games in a single search.

NBCUniversal’s Paris 2024 audience will be able see immersive views of iconic Olympic venues in Paris, like Versailles, Stade Roland Garros and the Aquatics Centre provided by Google Maps Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“We are very excited to be partnering with Google to deliver innovative, highly engaging elements that will enhance the coverage of the Paris Games for our audiences and make every viewer feel as though they are on the ground in Paris,” said Dan Lovinger, President of Olympic & Paralympic Partnerships, NBCUniversal. “This one-of-a-kind partnership demonstrates the endless possibilities when you combine innovative technology with premium content to enhance the viewing experience for fans of all ages.”

The deal marks the first time Google has worked with Team USA.

“Our partnership with Team USA and NBCUniversal during the Olympic & Paralympic Games provides an incredible stage to showcase how Google’s helpful everyday products like Google Search and Google Maps, and newer innovations like Gemini, are using AI to help fans explore, learn and connect with the Games,” said Marvin Chow, Google’s VP of marketing.

Team USA TV, a new free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel has been launched ahead of the Paris Summer Olympics by the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, working with NBCUniversal and FAST Studios.

The channel will give viewers a look at athletes training and competing to be part of Team USA, as well as archival footage of past Olympic Games.

Tune in to learn more about Team USA athletes, relive iconic Olympic and Paralympic moments, get behind-the-scenes access to Team USA House in Paris and hear about the Team USA athlete journey as Olympians prepare to qualify and compete.

“Team USA TV represents a welcome expansion of coverage for American Olympic and Paralympic athletes, providing a year-round companion to NBC’s coverage of national and international events, the Olympic & Paralympic Trials and the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” NBC Sports senior VP of Olympic programming and executive editor Joe Gesue said. “Showcasing athlete stories and bringing viewers closer to their journeys is the bedrock foundation of NBC’s approach, and the opportunity to partner even more closely with the USOPC will amplify our collective ability to do so.”

The new channel is available via Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Vizio WatchFree Plus, LG Channels and Xumo Play. It is expected to launch soon on Comcast NBCU’s Peacock.

“Adding Team USA to the FAST Studios roster, and producing Team USA Now, a flagship studio-based show, will allow fans everywhere to experience the athlete’s ongoing journey to represent Team USA,” FAST Studios CEO Stuart McLean said. 

FAST Studios works with well-known brands to launch streaming television networks.

“In addition to supporting NBCUniversal’s wonderful Olympic and Paralympic broadcasts from Paris, Team USA TV will serve as a year-round home for Team USA athletes to share their stories, and for fans to follow the journeys of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic team athletes,” Katie Bynum Aznavorian, chief strategy and growth officer, U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, said. 

“This partnership with NBC and Fast Studios extends coverage of Team USA in between the Games, fueling fans’ interest to get access to the diverse personalities and gritty performances that make up Team USA as they work every day to drive their personal performance forward and represent the United States in competition,” she said.

LG Ad Solutions found that 84% of parents plan to watch the 2024 Paris Olympic Games with their children, which will create a big opportunity for back-to-school advertisers.

In addition to advertising on NBC Sports’ coverage of the games on its broadcast, cable and streaming channels, LG says it can also help marketers reach Olympic-viewing parents.

“Brands can participate in major global events without relying solely on the traditional 30-second spot. Options such as LG Home Screen placements, pause ads, and sponsoring content segments — like a sporting event at the Olympics — provide opportunities for brands to stand out on the largest screen in the home during the peak back-to-school shopping period,” Marlow added.

LG found that 62% of parents said they expect to spend more on school supplies this year than last, when they shelled out an average of $1,080 per child.

Parents said they preferred streaming when co-viewing with their kids, and 70% said they like free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) — a number that’s 12% higher than all adults.

Most parents watch TV daily and spend 59% of the time they spend watching co-viewing with their children.

For marketers, the best ways to make parents pay attention are by featuring discounts, showing QR codes in their commercials or showing their products being used by students.

LG also said that when it comes to back-to-school shopping, 74% said they like to shop in-store, rather than online. Preferred destinations include Walmart and Target with parents dictating where their families go to buy school essentials.

“Understanding viewer behavior is critical for advertisers when building effective CTV advertising campaigns around back-to-school,“ LG Ad Solutions chief marketing officer Tony Marlow said. “These insights help advertisers understand that some advanced ad techniques can work harder for them, especially when these interactive features drive to things like specific store locations or in-store discounts. Advanced CTV ads have proven to be extremely effective for the season, with 85% of parents saying they have shopped at a specific store after seeing a back-to-school ad.”

The NBCUniversal Creative Impact Lab has created an Olympic commercial for the Challenged Athletes Foundation featuring U.S. Paralympic team hopeful Derek Loccident.     

The Challenged Athletes Foundation also worked with Venice Arts on the public service announcement, which will appear throughout NBCU’s promotion of the upcoming 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and Paralympics.

In the spot, Loccident addresses how he approached the challenges he faced when his life was changed after his foot was severed by a train, ending his college football career.

“Featuring Derek Loccident's journey to Comcast NBCU audiences is a win-win partnership between CAF, Venice Arts and NBCUniversal Creative Impact Lab,” CAF chief marketing officer Kara Sterner said. “This collaboration not only showcases our mission but also amplifies our visibility, enabling us to scale our impact. It's a prime example of how targeted exposure through creative alliances can empower nonprofits to expand their reach and deepen their community engagements.”

Undeterred by adversity, Loccident transitioned to track and field with a prosthetic leg provided by Össur and a sports-expense grant from CAF. 

The spot focuses on Loccident training for the high jump but flashes back to show him as a smiling kid, successful athlete and then in a hospital bed. He notes that individual have choices to make when adversity strikes. He says his choice was to “take it head on,” rather than quitting or running away.

“CAF is an amazing foundation that helps tons of people around the world,” Loccident said. “It’s awesome to be part of a family like this. They allow athletes to compete with confidence, knowing that whatever happens, happens and the rest will take care of itself.” 

Loccident’s dedication has driven him to compete for a spot on the world’s biggest athletic stage this summer in Paris 2024 Paralympics.

"The Creative Impact Lab is empowering the next generation of creators from diverse backgrounds while shining a light on the positive impact of nonprofits,”
Hilary Smith, executive VP of corporate social responsibility at NBCUniversal, said. “The Challenged Athletes Foundation is a leader in empowering athletes with physical disabilities, and we were thrilled to work with Venice Arts to create a powerful PSA that will hopefully inspire others like Derek to pursue their dreams.”

Michael Phelps, who has won more Olympic medals than any other human, will join NBCUniversal’s Olympics coverage in Paris this summer. Phelps won 28 Olympic medals in swimming, including 23 golds. 

Phelps will offer commentary and analysis on the daytime and primetime shows on NBC and Peacock, and will join Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines in the booth for some swimming events. 

He will be in the booth with Hicks and Gaines in primetime Friday, June 21, for the Olympic swimming trials in Indianapolis. 

Phelps picked up eight medals at both the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, then six apiece at the 2012 and 2016 Games. 

He also worked with NBC on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. 

“We are excited to have Michael return to our coverage across both daytime and primetime, and of course, the place where no one knows more about winning – at the pool,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer and president, NBC Olympics Production. “With his ability to analyze and entertain, our viewers are in for another gold-medal performance.”

The Olympics starts July 26 and ends August 11. 

History will team with LeBron James’s The SpringHill Co. to chronicle Jesse Owens’ historic performance in the 1936 Berlin Olympics as part of a documentary set to debut June 19, according to a new trailer.

The documentary, Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics, showcases the U.S. Olympic sprinter’s dominance during the 1936 games, winning four gold medals while triumphing over Adolf Hitler's Aryan supremacy agenda, according to the network. 

The two-hour project, narrated by Don Cheadle and inspired by Jeremy Schapp’s book Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, will feature archival Olympic footage and interviews from Owens, his family members, journalists, historians and other athletes, said the network.

Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics is the first of a three-part development deal between the network and SpringHill that will prioritize largely unknown historical stories that put diverse changemakers at the forefront of each narrative, according to History.

Along with James and Cheadle, the documentary is executive produced by Maverick Carter, Jamal Henderson, Philip Byron, Andre Gaines, Richard Foster, Chet Fenster, Eli Lehrer and Jennifer Wagman.

NBC and its affiliates have worked out an arrangement that will give affiliates 90-second cut-ins during daytime network coverage of the Paris Olympic games.

Affiliates will be able to use the cut-ins to promote their local news in front of Olympic-sized audiences.

On some weekdays, the cut-ins will appear during an afternoon break at about 5 p.m. — around the time viewers would normally tune in to early-evening local news programming.

Also Read: NBCUniversal Is Going for Gold With $1.2 Billion in Olympic Ad Sales

“Due to the increase in live Olympics coverage, our programming schedule has undergone unique changes compared to previous occasions. The change has resulted in extended disruptions to regular local news broadcasts throughout the day for this specific Olympic period,” said Eric Meyrowitz, executive VP at Hearst Television and chairman of the NBC affiliate board.

“Having received feedback from many affiliates, the concern was recognized by the board and addressed collaboratively with the network to find a resolution,” Meyrowitz said.

Stations may use the cut-in to provide a local news presence and provide local viewers with timely information. No advertising time is involved.

Also Read: NBCU To Promote Olympic Trials as ‘Making Team USA Presented by Xfinity’

Phil Martzolf, president, affiliate relations at NBCUniversal, said a large affiliate group first approached the network about Olympic coverage creating a news desert between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays.

“Everyone saw this as a great opportunity to promote local news in that window,“ Martzlof said. “We chose 5 o’clock because that is the highest rated time in our markets and will get the stations maximum exposure. Martzlof said the logistics of inserting the cut-in were not a big deal because the network is used to cutting to statons daily.

The network expects the cut-ins to contribute to Olympic ratings.

“At the local level, we’re getting tremendous promotional support and will have incredible stories to tell live from the games, especially when there’s an Olympian whose hometown is in that market,” Martzlof said. “Our stations and their talent are trusted by their viewers and this increased exposure is a win-win for all involved.”

For the stations, the cut-ins should keep Olympic viewers tuned in for local news.

“The Olympic Games are one of the peak periods for our viewership throughout the year,” Hearst’s Meyrowitz said. “This presents an excellent opportunity to highlight the collaboration between our local stations and the network, capitalizing on the substantial rise in audience numbers.”

Advertisers are looking to reach the right audiences and tell their stories inside compelling content, Karen Kovacs, president of client partnerships at NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships, tells B+C.

NBCU is set up to respond to both of those needs during the upfront, Kovacs says.

“Our partners want to tell stories with our stories to the right strategic audiences,” she said. “It’s really nice to be able to deliver on both the premium content piece as well as having the tech innovations and the scale” they need to do the job.

In terms of content, NBCU has some big tentpoles coming up, starting with the Paris Summer Olympics.

“You’re going to see a lot of innovation as to how we’re storytelling around the Olympics,” she said.

After the Olympics, NBCU is in the market selling sponsorships for the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live.  The celebration will include a Friday-night concert at Radio City Music Hall right before the 50th anniversary broadcast.

Some key sponsors have already bought SNL packages, Kovacs said.

“We’re going to kick off the celebration coming right out of the Olympics this summer,” she said. “It’s SNL. It’s multigenerational. The brand has tremendous influence on our culture.”

Sports will also continue to be driver for NBCU, which will have the Super Bowl in 2026. That year it will also have the Milan Winter Olympics and the World Cup on Telemundo.

NBCU has also been investing in technology to help advertisers identify the audiences the will help them reach their marketing goals.

“We’ve really seen an industry shift taking place with strategic audiences,” Kovacs said. “They are already making up half of our linear and streaming business and it continues to grow.”

NBCU recently launched its one-platform total audiences, which uses artificial intelligence to help find strategic audiences at scale and forecast the size of those audiences across linear and streaming.

In the new media environment, tech companies are not only competing with video advertising, but increasingly participating in the upfront.

“We think we’re in a really interesting position,” Kovacs said. “We sort of stand alone in that we are a media powerhouse and we have tech prowess.”

Much of NBCU’s advertising innovation has originated with its Peacock streaming service.

Peacock has been expanding the amount of shoppable content it streams.

It is also going to be launching a product called virtual concessions, which gives viewers an opportunity to shop for food, beverages and snacks so they don’t have to leave the viewing experience.

Kovacs said it is pretty early to predict how the upfront market will go.

“Q4 looked pretty good,“ she said. “We saw some strengthening in the marketplace.” 

The strength of Olympic advertising has NBCU feeling optimistic because the Paris Games are on track to generate the most ad revenue in the history of the Olympics, and NBCU has already set a record for digital revenue.

NBCU also sees positive trend in some product categories, with improvement in consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals, Kovacs said.

Travel is sort of evening out, and the tech category is lagging a bit and hasn’t fully bounced back,” she said.

Let the games begin on Roku, which made a deal with NBCUniversal to create a new destination on the Roku homepage screen menu that highlights coverage of the upcoming Paris Summer Olympics and pushes users to NBCU’s streamer Peacock.

The NBC Olympic Zone on Roku will feature a replay row, clips, and highlight reels that will take users directly to Peacock, which will live-stream every Olympic event.

Roku and other streamers have been sprinting to add sports to their lineups.

“Our users are going to have an amazing summer with the NBC Olympic Zone on Roku, directing them to Peacock and all the highlights, replays, and live competition coming straight from Paris,” Tedd Cittadine, VP of content partnerships at Roku, said. “This is a unique, exciting opportunity for us, streamers, and sponsors looking to align their brands with this global powerhouse sports moment.” 

Peacock, going for the gold, announced a pre-Olympics $2-per-month price increase.

“Creating partnerships like the NBC Olympic Zone on Roku, which emphasize tentpole content in the user experience on our partner platforms, has proven to provide deeper engagement,” Matt Schnaars, president, NBCUniversal Content Distribution, said. “NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Paris Olympics will be the can’t-miss event of 2024 and this partnership displays the type of experience we can create with partners like Roku to drive users into Peacock.”

The NBC Olympic Zone on Roku will help streamers discover live and upcoming events, stay up to date with a Medal Count module, watch pre-Olympics highlights from the U.S. team trials and engage with athlete profile and other Olympics-related content.

NBCUniversal said it has sold $1.2 billion worth of advertising in the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, putting it on track to be the gold medal winner for most ad revenue ever generated by an Olympic Games. 

The revenue total includes about $350 million from new advertisers.

Digital ad revenue has already set a record, the company said.

The previous, pandemic-delayed Summer Olympics in Tokyo generated $1.25 billion in revenue.

NBCU said it has sold out all of the ad inventory for the opening and closing ceremonies.

Also sold out are NBCU’s Prime Pods, shorter breaks designed to focus attention on one or two sponsors.

Around 95% of the custom, primetime marketing integrations have been snapped up.

With women’s sports in the spotlight — and generating record ratings — NBCU noted that more than half of its primetime programming is devoted to women’s competitions. 

Counting down to the Summer Olympics in Paris, NBCUniversal plans to air more than 200 hours of live coverage as American athletes compete to represent their country and go for the gold.

NBCU and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee are rebranding the Olympic Trials as “Making Team USA,” and the coverage on NBC, Peacock and USA Network is being presented by Xfinity, parent company Comcast’s broadband and cable brand.

Making Team USA live coverage starts this month with wrestling, rowing, canoe/kayaking. In June, slots on the swimming, diving, track and field and gymnastics will be competed for, with NBC airing 14 nights of coverage in primetime.

Every trial will be streamed live on Peacock.

“All the drama we love about the Olympics begins with ‘Making Team USA,’ when our nation’s best athletes vie to make the most competitive team in the world. In some events, it’s harder to qualify for the U.S. team than it is to win a medal at the Olympics themselves,” Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of NBC Olympics Production, said. 

“Earning a place on Team USA is a lifelong dream for these athletes and most of them get only one opportunity to do so, which is what makes the competition so fierce and the drama so compelling,” Solomon said. “But the reward for all the hard work is sweet — once you make Team USA, you’re an Olympian for life.”

Among the highlights will be watching seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky try out for the swimming team. 

In gymnastics, four-time gold medalist Simone Biles will be trying out, along with Suni Lee, who earned three medals at the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

Six-time world champion Noah Lyles, hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and women’s 100-meter champ Sha’Carri Richardson will be competing in track and field.

Team USA trials for boxing, the marathon and table tennis were held earlier.

NBCU will also be covering the tryouts for the Paralympic team. 

“The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Team Trials offer some of the best competition anywhere in the world — a testament to the excellence and depth of the athlete pool striving to represent Team USA in Paris this summer,” Rocky Harris, USOPC chief of sport and athlete services, said. “We are looking forward to the Paris Games  — opening just a little more than 100 days from now — but first we join fans around the country in celebrating the awesome effort of athletes giving their all to make Team USA.”

Xfinity, the presenting sponsor, is rolling out its Xfinity Athlete Connections program, which helps keep athletes who qualify for the Olympic and Paralympic teams connected to friends and family while competing.

“The Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 will be nothing short of extraordinary,” said Matt Lederer, VP, brand partnerships & amplification at Xfinity. “As a proud partner of Team USA, we’re honored to spotlight the incredible athletes on their path to Making Team USA“And, our Xfinity Athlete Connections program will keep Team USA athletes connected to what matters most during their pursuit of Olympic and Paralympic gold.”

All Olympic and Paralympic Trials coverage can be streamed on NBC Olympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

The Paris Olympics will be held from July 26 through August 11. 

NBCUniversal on Wednesday revealed multiple new features coming to subscription streaming service, Peacock, ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics in July, including the ability to view up to four simultaneous matches at once.

Multiview, a feature already popular on platforms including YouTube TV, allows users to track several different sports simultaneously and “help navigate more than 5,000 hours of live coverage throughout the Games, including all 329 medal events.”

In addition to its multiview display, Peacock viewers will also see expert information about stakes for events, elimination risks and data on competitors.

Users can freely move around Peacock’s multiview, toggle audio and click through in order to dive deeper and watch full screen at any moment. (You can read NBCU's press release here.

Peacock users will also have the ability to browse by sport, athlete or via an interactive schedule in order to decide what to watch.

NBCU also announced a new interactive “live actions” button that allows viewers to choose which events they want to follow, search for specific athletes and navigate primetime programming like Gold Zone.

Providing rolling whip-around coverage from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET, Gold Zone will follow highlights and exciting moments from various events across the Olympic Games.

NBCU's coverage caught flack during the delayed Tokyo Games, with viewers, for example, complaining that the broadcaster tape-delayed too many events, and spoiled some of its own tape-delayed coverage. 

NBC has shared its summer schedule, which includes new seasons of summer staples America’s Got Talent and American Ninja Warrior, and the Olympics in Paris. 

Weakest Link will air new episodes starting Tuesday, April 2, and the game show, imported from the U.K., moves to Mondays as of May 20. Jane Lynch hosts. 

American Ninja Warrior will air two specials in May. The women’s championship takes place on May 12 and the couples championship on May 27. Season 16 of the competition series starts June 3. Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbajabiamila host Ninja Warrior and Zuri Hall is co-host. 

America’s Got Talent begins May 28, with Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Sofia Vergara the judges, and Terry Crews the host. It is season 19. 

Live AGT episodes begin August 13 from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. At season end, the winner gets $1 million. 

Game show Password, hosted by Keke Palmer and Jimmy Fallon, is on after AGT. The season began March 12. Celeb guests this season include Lauren Graham, Howie Mandel, Wiz Khalifa and Joel McHale. 

The Wall continues season five July 1. Chris Hardwick hosts. Lebron James and Maverick Carter produce the game show, which NBC says puts “more than $12 million on the line each night.” Contestants will include a baseball coach who saved the life of his player by donating his kidney and a person who was exonerated from a wrongfully convicted crime and now runs a nonprofit helping those impacted by incarceration. 

All shows stream on Peacock a day after they air on NBC. 

The Paris Summer Olympics take place July 26 to August 11. NBC will offer at least nine hours of daily coverage and Peacock will stream all 329 medal events. 

PASADENA, Calif. — Snoop Dogg was a surprise guest for NBCU’s Olympics presentation at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour here. Snoop will be a special correspondent for NBC at the Olympics, offering his own unique take on the competitions and athletes. 

Snoop called the Olympics “a time when the whole world can come together and cheer for their athletes,” and “a chance for the world to be on one page.”

Also Read: More Coverage from the TCA Winter Press Tour

Snoop described the Games as a peace offering, and added, “I always represent peace.” 

Snoop, in NBC Olympics sweats, shared the stage with Molly Solomon, executive producer and president, Olympics Production, and swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines. 

Solomon said the Games will be live all day from Paris, which is on a six-hour time difference from the East Coast. Today will be live in Paris from 7 to 9 a.m. 

Prime will see NBC distill the day’s events into a three-hour highlights package. “We will take those three hours and make sure it’s the best performances of the day,” said Solomon. “We are additive in primetime — we’ll tell you the why behind the stories.”

She mentioned Paris itself having a key role in the broadcasts, promising “joy, spectacle and crowds.” The opening ceremonies will see the world’s athletes on boats, floating down the Seine, and the lighting of the cauldron at the Eiffel Tower. 

Also Read: NBCUniversal Says Paris Olympics Ad Sales Are Pacing Ahead of Tokyo 2021

Snoop shared his earliest Olympics memories, mentioning watching sprinter Edwin Moses in the 1984 Games. “My whole family was watching as if we knew this man,” he said. 

Asked if he would research the sports and participants, or come in to the broadcasts cold, Snoop said he always comes in hot. “Don’t worry about the research,” he said. “I know everything about everybody.”

Asked about what to look for in swimming, Gaines said, “Katie Ledecky — you always start with her,” adding that she had her first loss in many years last week. 

Snoop promised NBC would be “shaking it up in many different ways.”

He added, “You only get it every four years, so we’re gonna make the most of it.”

Comcast NBCUniversal said 2024 Olympics and Paralympics advertising sales are pacing ahead of the $1.8 billion generated by the  previous summer Olympics in Tokyo, which were moved to 2021 from 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of the advertising inventory in the live coverage of the Paris opening ceremony is already sold out. Also sold out are all of the planned halftime sponsorships for team events, such as basketball and soccer, across NBCU’s platforms,

“The Olympic and Paralympic Games is the great aggregator of viewership bringing cultures and communities together to celebrate the pinnacle of athletic achievement and root for their favorite athletes and team,” said Dan Lovinger, president, Olympic & Paralympic partnerships at NBCU.

“With this level of comradery, the Olympic & Paralympic movement offers sponsors and advertisers a premium environment to reach dedicated and engaged consumers anywhere and everywhere they are and builds long-lasting impacts for brands within and beyond the Games,” Lovinger said.

Also Read: Delta’s NBCU Olympic Sponsorship Takes Off With ‘Top Chef’ Paris Integration

Also sold out are NBCU Olympic Prime Pod sponsorships, which provide shorter, high-impact commercial breaks. Prime Pods will run across both linear and streaming coverage and will include new Peacock ad innovations. 

The Olympics, which start July 26, 2024, will have more programming hours on the NBC broadcast network than any previous games,

Meanwhile, every Olympic and Paralympic event will stream live and on-demand on Peacock  for the first time.

NBCUniversal will provide more than 140 televised hours of coverage plus 1,500 streaming hours on Peacock and NBC Sports digital platforms.  

“Over the past year, NBCUniversal has deployed a new consumer engagement vision and reimagined marketing approach for Paris 2022,” NBCU chief marketing officer, sports & entertainment Jenny Storms said. “Along with incredible athlete stories, Paris is a key aspect of our marketing and promotional efforts as it is a top destination for Gen Z and millennials and the Eiffel Tower alone is a top location posted on social media. Our star-studded bespoke campaigns started earlier, bringing Paris 2024 into the cultural conversation and generating millions of impressions and higher intent-to-view figures than recent Games, and we’re just getting started.” 

NBCUniversal said it has completed its upfront sales, saying the dollar volume of ad commitments were “roughly in line” with last year’s upfront, which was in the $7 billion range across broadcast, cable and digital.

With falling ratings, a strike by writers and actors and economic jitters, this year’s upfront has been a buyers’ market, with prices dropping for traditional commercials especially in primetime. 

The main exception is sports where demand remained relatively strong.

Confronted with a weak market, ad sellers have almost uniformly sought volume, creating competition for ad dollars. The competition was particularly acute on the digital side, where there was oversupply because media companies have been emphasizing streaming.

After a record-setting upfront last year under former ad sales head Linda Yaccarino, now CEO of Twitter, NBCU, now led by interim chairman for ad sales and partnerships Mark Marshall, said it was able to get as much volume as it could this year largely thanks to a trio of big events: BravoCon coming in November, the Paris Olympics next summer and the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live.

Those events generated more revenue than anticipated, NBCU said.

Peacock also had a good upfront, according to NBCU, with commitments up 30% versus last year. Last year, Peacock doubled its upfront sales to $1 billion.

For the Olympics, NBCU said sales are nearly double the pace of the Tokyo games in 2020 at this point, with advertisers who did not buy the Tokyo games committed to spending more than $100 million in new money during the event. 

Already, all of the Prime Pods — shorter commercial breaks with messages from only one or two brands — in the Olympics are sold out, NBCU said.

Instead of simply selling ads in a special anniversary episode of SNL, NBCU is looking to get a group of advertisers to commit to buying a seven-month promotional window. NBCU said it has gotten interest from 30 marketers in 13 categories including auto, wireless, tech, beverages, insurance, retail, consumer packaged goods, financial and travel. 

In addition to the Olympics, NBCU said it scored with its sports properties, with revenue up 50% across broadcast, cable, digital and Peacock. 

NBCU’s new Big Ten college-football package drew 40 new clients in categories including auto, insurance and retail. Telemundo coverage of soccer’s Women’s World Cup, which also will stream on Peacock, had a record number of advertisers. And Sunday Night Football has strong advertiser demand, NBCU said.

The Women’s World Cup also helped Telemundo generate its highest volume since the 2019-20 upfront.

NBCUniversal, which has been pushing its advertising technology, said programmatic deals are up 50% vs this time last year. NBCU makes ad inventory available across 17 demand-side platforms in order to provide addressability, flexible pricing packages and ease of access while giving brands the ability to buy closer to air dates.  

NOTE: Contains details about the Top Chef Season 20 finale (airing on June 1), so if you want to avoid spoilers, read this after watching the episode.

In the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the four remaining competitors in season 20 of Top Chef prepared to guide unseen partners through a Quickfire cooking challenge.

Top Chef, the long-running Bravo series, went abroad for the first time, shooting episodes in London with All-Star chef/contestants from around the world. For a surprise season finale [airing on June 1], the finalists were taken to Paris, the capital of cuisine. The weather wasn’t cooperating. The skies were gray. It was a chilly 56 degrees at about 10:30 a.m., and then it started to rain. But the show went on. 

Each of the Top Chef finalists was led to a stall. They were on one side of a wall. Their unseen partners were on the other side of the wall. The chefs had 30 minutes to coach their partners to make a dish using ingredients provided while they prepared the same dish. 

It wasn’t easy. As it turned out, few of the partners were very good cooks. They had other talents. Each of the partners was a Team USA Olympic or Paralympic athlete, quietly flown into Paris by Delta Air Lines, the official airline of Team USA and a major Olympics sponsor for NBCUniversal, which is gearing up for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. 

Host Padma Lakshmi emerged from a tent that served as a dressing room as production staffers tried to keep her and her fabulous outfit from getting wet as she walked to where the challenge was being filmed.

Lakshmi set the stage, noting that the chefs were in “one of the most-visited locations in the world.” She thanked Delta for bringing them there and asked the contestants if they “were ready to get on board.” They raised their hands.

She introduced the Quickfire challenge.

"In just over a year’s time, the world’s greatest athletes will be coming together here in Paris for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, where they will be competing in the ultimate test of their endurance and skills. Sound familiar? Thanks to Delta Air Lines, the official airline of Team USA, the four of you will be doing the same here in Paris over the next two weeks and it all starts right now," Lakshmi said. "Our friends at Delta have flown in some very special teammates for you today. But, you won’t know who they are until you are done cooking."

Slaving over hot stoves would be Suni Lee, all-around gymnastics gold medalist from the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics; two-time Olympic gold-medal hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone; Mallory Weggemann, a three-time Paralympic swimming medalist; and Hunter Woodhall, a three-time Paralympic track medalist. 

With the weather, some Delta and NBC executives watched from their hotel in Paris via closed circuit. 

A half-hour later, the winning chef was Ali Ghzawi, who was paired with Weggemann and managed to whip up potato leek soup with créme fraîche. As the winner, Ghzawi received a Delta Gift Card valued at $10,000 to take a trip anywhere Delta flies worldwide.  

“It definitely was challenging, but it was a lot of fun,” Wegemann said. 

“I’ve never cooked with leeks before and I had a moment where I wondered, ‘Are we going to have a dish when the timer’s up? There’s just going to be water in the bowl,’” she continued. “I think it’s neat to get out of your element and try something new I would sway we all probably thoroughly enjoyed it.”

The integration into Top Chef was part of Delta’s Olympics sponsorship deal with NBCU, worth a reported $400 million. NBCU and Delta gave Broadcasting+Cable access while the episode was being shot in Paris last October.

Airing now, about a year before the start of the Paris Olympics, the integration promotes the upcoming games for NBCU and Delta’s support of Team USA.

“With Delta being such a supporter of Team USA, it was exciting to watch the athletes extend their competitive spirit into the Top Chef environment,” Emmakate Young, managing director, brand marketing and sponsorships at Delta, said.  

“The Quickfire challenge demonstrated how much connection can happen over food, travel and cultures,” Young said. “It was great to see the participants from all over the world connecting over food in this amazing destination. We are looking forward to seeing how the episode plays out and consumer reaction to the challenge. Additionally, having the backdrop of this challenge be an iconic Parisian landmark will make Paris 2024 feel even closer.”

NBCUniversal has been televising the Summer Olympics since 1988 and the Winter Olympics since 2002. A new cycle for U.S. sponsors started in 2020, and Delta was the first to sign up with NBCU. The sponsorship runs through the Los Angeles games in 2028.

“Delta has been a fantastic Olympic sponsor,” said Dan Lovinger, president, Olympics and LA2028 advertising sales and partnerships at NBCU. “They are enthusiastic. Their entire organization is locked in and taking advantage of the Olympic spirit.” 

The International Olympic Committee has its own roster of global top sponsors — including Visa, Procter & Gamble, Toyota and Samsung — that have international rights to use the Olympic rings in their marketing. Those companies support their sponsorships by spending ad dollars during NBCU’s Olympic coverage in the U.S.

For the U.S. market, NBCU recruits sponsors of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams. In addition to Delta, NBCU’s Olympic sponsors include parent company Comcast, Salesforce, Deloitte and Hershey.

Delta’s first experiences as an Olympic sponsor were impacted by the COVID pandemic, yet the airline powered through the turbulence, helping to move athletes to Beijing, Lovinger said.

“It was a very tricky time period,” Lovinger said. “We couldn’t have done it without Delta. 

Going for the Gold

For Delta, sponsoring the Olympics was a big commitment. “We are a global brand and we wanted to align with a global property like the Olympics,” Young said. “Their tenets of faster, higher, stronger align perfectly with our tagline, ‘Keep climbing.’ So it was really a natural fit.”

Delta’s goal in advertising starts with awareness. Equally as important is creating the perception that the airline is a premium global brand — both with consumers and within its own staff.

“We want our Olympic sponsorship to permeate the entire organization,” Young said. “Our employees are a huge part of our audience and a massive constituency for us. We’ve got 80,000 and climbing employees. We want to make sure that everybody in the company knows about it.”

Delta has been a longstanding advertiser on NBCU and was a powerful media partner for the airline.

“They have so many different properties that hit our target audience, so we're able to really laser-focus on who we want to target, and NBC has a lot of those capabilities,” Young said.

Lovinger said NBCU aims to find opportunities for Olympic sponsors across the entirety of its portfolio for ways to connect with their target audience. 

The Top Chef integration in Paris was “a natural synthesis of our needs to grow the awareness that the games are coming with Delta's needs to connect people and Paris,” he said. 

Finding the right recipe for a tasty integration can be a tricky thing.

Sponsors like Delta prefer to sponsor Quickfire challenges because they don’t want to be responsible for a contestant being eliminated, Jamie Cutburth, executive VP, Creative Partnerships, Advertising and Partnerships, NBCUniversal, said.

But taking chefs and Olympians to Paris was on brand for Delta, according to Young, who said she watches the show.

“We obviously bring people to places. get them from A to B,” Young said. “But we believe our ultimate purpose is to get people to their potential and to help them achieve their potential. That was another reason why it was really a bull's eye for us to be a part of this partnership.”

Delta wasn’t looking to overpower the segment with branding and doesn’t settle for cookie-cutter solutions. 

“We never want to in any of our relationships just slap a logo on something,” she said. “We really want a natural fit and a partnership. It would require a lot of things coming together and really be a bull's eye for us. And this one provided that.”

The only thing that would have made the segment better would have been to have had a Delta jet fly over the contestant behind the Eiffel Tower. “Maybe we could do it in post,” Young joked.

Weggemann, the athlete who won the Quickfire challenge, worked with Delta since 2019 as a member of Delta’s advisory board on disability. “When they became a Team USA partner, I was ecstatic because I’m very biased in my enthusiasm for Delta,” she said. “They’re a remarkable brand because when you’re with them, it truly is a family.”

Weggeman also worked with NBCU as an on-field reporter during the 2018 Pyeongchang Paralympic Games in South Korea and worked in the studio during the 2022 Paralympics in Beijing.

Weggemann is one of six Olympians and Paralympians Delta works with. They have been featured in the airline’s ad campaign. The athletes also work with Delta employees. They worked with different departments. Some reviewed safety protocols, others went through flight attendant training

“The airline industry is hard and we do have to overcome a lot of adversity and be very resilient,” Young said. “Those were themes that really resonated with our employee base.” 

City of Light

While being in France was new to Top Chef, sponsors being stirred into episodes wasn’t.

“It’s wonderful to be here in Paris,” Lakshmi said. “This is one for the history books. Rain is part of life and it’s certainly part of life here in Paris. So it’s almost apropos that we get into it on our first outing here in Paris.”

Lakshmi said she and the show do their best to incorporate sponsors’ initiatives into their scripts.

“I’m very grateful to our sponsors because they allow us to do the show in such a high-caliber way,” Lakshmi said. “For instance, without Delta we wouldn’t be here. They enabled us to fly our whole crew to London and onward to Paris.”

Lakshmi noted that she’d previously worked with Delta, curating an in-flight entertainment program for Asian-American and Pacific  Islander Heritage Month.

Delta fit right in with the show’s other sponsors for season 20, which including first-timers Finish Dishwasher Detergent, Ritz Crackers, and Saratoga Spring Water, along with returning sponsors Anolon Cookware, BMW of North America, Mastercard, Morton Salt, Universal Pictures and Vrbo.

“Delta enabled Top Chef to tell the story of taking the contestants to England and, if they were successful, to Paris as well,” NBCU’s Cutburth said.

Cameras were rolling not just in the kitchens, but at the airport, Cuthburth noted. 

“Our team was at Charles de Gaulle picking up Olympians,” he said. “We did the B-roll footage; we tell the whole story. We've learned that audiences love the cooking, but they also love the  people and we want to help tell that story. So you see the athletes are arriving and getting excited. You know, that’s all real. They’re fun, behind-the-scenes stories for the audience.

“The storytelling in Top Chef provides plenty of space for brand stories, too,” Cutburth said.

“We try to create a very natural script and we [ want to tell a very natural story,” he continued. “Without Delta, we wouldn’t be in Paris bringing the Olympians togetherI think we are also working hard to make sure that our partners’ brands are elevated in the most organic way possible. We don’t want to be beating people over the head with a brand point. I think everyone in our industry agrees we're beyond that.”

Brands can afford the softer sell, he said, because it works.

“We work directly with our research team and understand the lifts in brand favorability and brand awareness,” Cutburth said. “Top Chef is always stellar as an environment when it comes to increasing brand awareness and favorability, mostly because we do it in such a creative and unique way. We don't do the same integration twice, so every integration that we create is bespoke.” 

Going to Paris was a chef’s-kiss moment for the Top Chef, added Ryan Flynn, senior VP, recurring production for Bravo.

“We endeavor to introduce our viewers to a location,” Flynn said. “What better way to say you're in Paris than the base of the Eiffel Tower.” 

The rain didn’t put a damper on the scene, Flynn said. “Not at all.  For us, rain or shine, we press on, and we're always ready for anything.”

While the show is obviously open to branded integrations, a balance needs to be struck. “I always think about the viewers at home and what feels appropriate,” Flynn said, “We have very savvy, very smart viewers.” 

That’s particularly true with a first-time sponsor like Delta. “If it’s too much like an obvious commercial, it’s our job to say to them, it’s in your best interest for us to find that right balance, so that when people watch they’re excited.”

And of course, there’s a financial incentive to integrate sponsors into the show.

“It really allows us to continue to make the show we want,” Flynn said. “What's great about this is so many parts of our company come together to support, what we think is — obviously, I'm going to be biased — one of the best shows on TV and hopefully the best cooking competition show on TV,”

The Top Chef cast said going to Paris was the piece de resistance for the show.

“It took 20 seasons to get here. It really means a lot and I think the fans are going to love it,” Tom Colicchio, Top Chef’s head judge, said. “Chefs of my generation, and maybe even slightly older, at some point we all came to France to work. It was like a rite of passage.”

He noted that the competing chefs were psyched to get to Paris. “Some have never been here, and so as a working chef, I think it’s really exciting for them,” he said. “For us, we get to eat a lot of great meals, when we’re not actually working.”

Added Top Chef judge Gail Simmons: “For so long, France was the only place that mattered in food. It was the center of Western culinary history and that is still true to some degree.”

“I think our producers do a great job of working those products into the challenges,” Simmons added. “Partners allow us to create the best possible challenge around them so that our chefs don’t mind  the sum is bigger than its parts.”

Spicy Competition

Before the competition, the athletes eyed one another as rivals while also sharing scouting reports on which chefs would make the best partners.

“I don’t know who had experience cooking, or even likes cooking, but I do know that these athletes are of such a high caliber that they're really good at taking directions,” Lakshmi said. “They understand what’s at stake for the chef they're paired up with and I think they all wanted to do a good job and I think they all did do a good job.”

Woodhall, the Paralympic track medalist, said he went into the competition with no expectations. “I was just trying to figure it out as I go. [Chef Buddha Lo] was very good at teaching what to do, but I told him I’m not good at cooking, so let’s do this together.”

Woodhall has done some work with sponsors before. “We try to work with companies that align with what they want to do.”

Weggemann, who won the Quickfire challenge, said she thought the values it takes to compete cross over from athletics to business. “You look at the resilience it takes to be an Olympic and Paralympic athlete, and the drive and dedication and community,” she said. “There's so many parallels between that and Delta. And I think that that's such a really powerful synergy that we share.”

While she’s looking ahead to her fourth Paralympics, she’s also looking forward to life outside the pool. 

“At this stage of my career, what makes me a fierce competitor is knowing, there’s more to Mallory Weggemann than being a swimmer,” she said.

“I love what I got to do with NBC for the 2022 Beijing games,” Weggemann said. “I thought it was such a remarkable chance to kind of pull out of my athletic world. It’s not about you. It’s about connecting with the viewer so you can articulate the stories of the individuals who we are highlighting and share that with people.” 

Delta’s sponsorship will continue to gain altitude as the games get nearer.

Earlier this year, the airline opened a Delta Sky Club at the airport in Minneapolis where Top Chef inspired dishes were served. A Delta Sky Club in Boston similarly featured recipes from Top Chef alum Karen Akunowicz.

“The next big thing for all of our partners will be the one-year-out announcement,” Lovinger said. “There’s still a year to go. They’ve got other cool stuff cooking.”

NBCUniversal announced its coverage plans for the 2024 Paris Olympics, with NBC and Peacock offering an unprecedented amount of live coverage.

Given the time zone difference, every day, NBC will provide at least nine hours of coverage of the games during daytime. NBC will broadcast the finals of swimming, gymnastics, track and field and other events live.

During primetime NBC will present a three-hour show that will take Americans up close and inside the Olympics, with behind-the-scenes access, new technology and views from iconic locations around Paris.

“The Paris Olympics are going to be the most binge-worthy event of 2024,“ NBC Spotts chairman Pete Bevacqua said. “Viewers will devour every moment of the Games for 17 straight nights on NBC in primetime where the stories of the day will be retold with special dramatic flair in front of the gathered American audience.

“For those wanting to watch the competition as it happens, Peacock will have everything live, creating the greatest single destination in sports media history,“ he added. “From the spectacular landmarks of Paris to the world’s greatest athletes performing in front of full stadiums and arenas for the first time in six years, viewers can expect one of the most extraordinary Olympics ever.” 

As the Olympics’ streaming home, Peacock will stream every sports and event, including all 329 medal events. It will also have replays, NBC programming and video clips on-demand, along with virtual channels and original programming.

“Peacock is bringing the rich history of these incredible games to our viewers like never before, providing unparalleled and unprecedented access to one of the world’s greatest sporting events,” Kelly Campbell, president, president of Peacock and Direct to Consumer at NBCU said. “Already home to more live sports than any other SVOD service, Peacock is proud to be the streaming home of Team USA and all of their passionate fans.”

NBCU said Telemundo will provide Spanish-language coverage of the Olympics, with additional coverage on its Universo cable channel. Telemundo will focus on the men’s and women’s soccer competitions.

Some Olympic events will also appear on NBCU’s USA Network, E!, CNBC and Golf Channel. 

NBCU will also be television the Paris Paralympics. Coverage plans for those competitions will be released at a future date.

The Olympics will be held from July 26 through August 11.

Comcast NBCUniversal purchased the rights to televise the summer and winter Olympics in the U.S. through 2032.

NBCUniversal and Twitter said they have ramped up their collaboration around the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games in Paris.

The new arrangement is expected to bring greater reach and scale to advertisers, the companies said.

Beginning in February and counting down to the opening ceremonies, Twitter will feature NBCU’s pre-Olympics coverage, including competition highlights, key U.S. Olympic Team trials moments and a Paris 25-Day Countdown, with daily features on athletes or events.

During the games, Twitter will feature memorable and engagement moments in English and Spanish. 

NBC Olympics will also be producing a daily live show that will be posted to Twitter. The show will feature highlights, athlete interviews and happenings around Paris.

The content will appear on the @NBCOlympics handle.

“For the first time since 2018, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will return to their true glory in 2024, with full stadiums and the world’s greatest athletes competing against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Paris, where the modern Olympic Games were conceived 130 years ago,” Joe Varvara, global head of partnerships at Twitter, said during Twitter’s NewFront presentation Wednesday. “Together with NBCUniversal, we’re excited to bring you new opportunities to align with the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games next summer.”

With the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics about 500 days away, NBCUniversal said that it is already pacing ahead of the Tokyo Games in its advertising sales efforts.

“While it’s still very early, I can report that we are pacing well ahead of where we were at the same point in time entering the recent Summer Games in Tokyo,” said Dan Lovinger, president, Olympics and LA2028 advertising sales and partnerships at NBCU.

Lovinger said strong interest in the Olympics wasn’t a surprise.

”Paris, of course, brings new opportunities to be inspired and excited coming off three Asian-based games, particularly the last two during a pandemic,” he said. “The comparables seem like a no-brainer for an advertiser to want to get involved with the Olympics moving forward.”

Lovinger said NBCU has had conversations with official sponsors, known as Ring Holders. Some of those sponsors have category exclusivity, so those categories are already sold out.

NBCU is currently in active pre-upfront discussions with all of the major agency holding companies. “The Olympics will be included in those discussions and we anticipate doing significant business in that marketplace,” he said.

Lovinger declined to talk about specific advertisers, categories or pricing, but said, “What I can promise you is that the Olympics will continue to lead the pack in terms of pricing premiums given the environment, the reach, the scale and the brand impact.”

To document the impact Olympic sponsors get, NBCU pointed to data from research company Brand Asset Valuator.

According to BAV, Olympic partners elevated their brand perception, loyalty and market share, outpacing the performance of non-Olympic partners within their categories, said Matthew Gottlieb, VP, sports insights & research, advertising & partnerships at NBCUniversal, 

“Brands saw substantial lifts across all facets of BAV’s brand equity pillars — esteem, knowledge, differentiation and relevance — ultimately driving performance across a variety of business metrics,” Gottlieb said. “Olympic partners on average outpaced competitors' performance on brand funnel metrics by 36% across categories.”

Sponsors were also winners when it came to financial performance, more than doubling the return of the S&P 500 over the past 15 years, Gottlieb said.

Lovinger said the Paris games should be a particularly attractive event.

“If you think about it, over the past year, many of the world's major sporting events have had their post-pandemic moment, their big exciting return to normal,” he said. “The Olympics is ready for its moment to shine with Paris 2024.

“The games will return to their true glory with full stadiums, iconic venues and maskless athletes in this beautiful city of Paris, where the modern Olympic Games were conceived 130 years ago,” Lovinger said.

An analysis of ads run on NBCUniversal brands by iSpot.tv indicated that "advertisers today are underinvesting in streaming" and missing out on valuable audiences, iSpot.tv CEO Sean Muller told B+C business editor Jon Lafayette in a keynote at the recent Advanced Advertising Summit in Los Angeles.

The measurement firm's "test and learn" experiment with NBCU found that streaming outlets got about 10% of a campaign's ads on average, when a more optimal level would be 30%-40%, Muller said at the June 7 event. "You get a lot more reach against younger demographics and at lower frequencies," Muller said. 

Also: NBCU Says 30%-40% of Campaigns Should be OTT Based on iSpot.tv Data 

Separately, Comcast recently estimated that the optimal portion of the ad spend on streaming was 20%-30%, and said returns declined beyond a 40% share.

Muller also read out some stats from iSpot.tv's measurement of Olympics, Super Bowl and March Madness college basketball that showed the importance of cross-screen measurement of viewing of big events. For the Beijing Winter Olympics, for example, iSpot.tv measured 27.4 million viewers on streaming, and 65.9% of them only watched the games on streaming. Super Bowl LVI in February had 10.4 million average viewer minutes, and 70% of them were cord cutters. March Madness drew 12.3% of its audience from streaming (68% of those only watched on streaming). 

"It's important to get cross screen right and it's important to [deduplicate] these audiences," Muller said.

There were 31.7 million out of home viewers for the Beijing games, 12.5 million for the Super Bowl and 40.6 million for March Madness, he said.

Putting in a plug for measuring ad ratings separately, as iSpot.tv does, Muller said the most watched ad in the Super Bowl (an NFL ad during halftime) had a 22% bigger audience than the least watched ad, which is a big swing during a game that has a fairly steady audience throughout. 

Muller also noted that iSpot.tv was the first to report an audience figure for the Super Bowl (150 million) and didn't revise the number later, while Nielsen revised its number twice as more data became available. The iSpot.tv database is smart-TV centric, bolstered with panel data, census data and set-top box data, he said.

Muller said iSpot.tv was able to attract a recent $325-million investment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management because the audience measurement field is a $10 billion industry and is in flux with new developing technologies and changing viewer dynamics. Those conditions also led to private equity interests buying industry Nielsen for $16 billion, he said.

"This space is great," Muller said, unlike the music business where he started his career. 

The Advanced Advertising Summit was part of L.A. TV Week. The next Advanced Advertising Summit will be held in September in New York City as part of Fall TV Week. ■

NBCUniversal reported higher profits in the first quarter despite continued losses from Peacock as the Super Bowl and Olympics generated big revenue numbers.

Parent company Comcast said NBCUniversal’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 7.4% to $1.6 billion, including losses from Peacock.

The Peacock losses were $456 million in revenue of $472 million, compared to a $277 million loss a year ago in revenue of $91 million.

Also: Brian Roberts Says Peacock Had ‘Exceptional’ Quarter

Revenues rose 46.6% to $19.296 million with theme parks making a comeback and NBC airing the Olympics and Super Bowl in the quarter. 

Media EBITDA was $1.159 billion, down 21.3%.

The Olympics generated $963 million in revenue and the Super Bowl brought in $519 million. 

Excluding the Olympics and the Super Bowl, media revenue was up 5.9% to $5.383 million, compared to a 36.3% jump to $6.865 including those events.

Distribution revenue was up 21.6%, partly because of the Olympics.

Comcast Cable said its residential video customers fell to 17.011 million from 18.590 a year ago. Residential broadband customers increased to 29.836 million from $28.774 million.

Net income rose 6.6% to $3.549 billion, or 78 cents a share, from $3.329 billion, or 71 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 14% to $31 million.

“2022 is off to a great start. For the first quarter we reported healthy growth in adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS, generated significant free cash flow, and increased our return of capital to shareholders. We also continued to make important organic investments and strategic decisions, highlighted by yesterday’s announcement of our new joint venture with Charter,” said CEO Brian Roberts.

“Our media business is performing well, and the scale of our reach is underscored by our successful broadcast of the Super Bowl and the Olympics in the same week. These events were viewed by more than 200 million people in the U.S. across NBCUniversal’s platforms, including Peacock, which had an exceptional quarter,” Roberts said.

Roberts said the Charter venture “demonstrates the benefits of our focus on innovation and enables us to bring entertainment aggregation and streaming products that run off our global technology platform to millions more customers.” ■

Carrie Stimmel was named chief growth officer, Olympics & Paralympics at NBCUniversal’s Advertising & Partnerships unit.

Stimmel, who had been executive VP, advertising and partnerships at NBCU, will be responsible for finding innovative ways to monetize NBCU’s Olympic and Paralympic business, including media and sponsorship sales for Team USA and LA 2028.

She will report to Dan Lovinger, who was named president, advertising and partnerships responsible for NBCU’s business relationship with the games earlier this year.

Also: NBCU Touts New Metrics for Ads During Olympic Games

NBCU also named Josh Noval senior VP, Olympics & Paralympics. He had been a VP and also will report to Lovinger.

“Carrie’s passion, expertise and advocacy for the Olympics and Paralympics business brings tremendous value to our team, our clients and our partners,” said Lovinger. “I am excited for Carrie to lead our efforts as we redefine, innovate and strengthen our existing partnerships and set us up for success in our upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

Before joining NBCU, Stimmel was VP, network sales at Univision and was a VP for sales at Nickelodeon.

“NBCUniversal content brings families and friends together to inform, entertain and shape the world,” said Stimmel. “I am more than thrilled to take on this role and reimagine the possibilities for the upcoming Olympic Games. We are all excited to come together, celebrate the athletes and shine a light on what the Olympic movement means to our viewers, our community and our partners alike.”

Noval has 18 years of experience in Olympic sales and marketing with NBC since the Athens Olympics in 2004. ■

Linear TV advertising sales slowed in February, leaving year-to-date linear TV investments up 6% so far this year compared to last year, according to Standard Media Index.

In January, linear TV sales were up 9%.

But sales remain down from 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. Compared to 2020, linear television ad sales are down 6% so far this year.

Broadcast TV sales are up 17% so far this year, offset by a 4% decline in cable. SMI said that TV sales were boosted by the Olympics, NFL Playoffs and Super Bowl LVl. So far, 2022 has been the best year ever for broadcast dollars.

That made Comcast NBCUniversal, which carried those big sports events, a big winner. Comcast media revenue was up 139% in February, topping Google in the ad revenue tracked by SMI. Google was up 13%. Disney was down 10%, Facebook was up 16% and Paramount was down 59% after having the Super Bowl on CBS in February 2021.

Comcast’s share of ad dollars was 18%, followed by Google at 12%, The Walt Disney Co. at 7%, Facebook at 6% and Paramount at 5%.

Across all media, ad investment rose 15% year over year in February, leaving it up 17% so far in 2022.

So far this year, digital advertising is up 26% and accounts for 51% of all ad dollars.

Out of home jumped 116%, radio was up 16% and newspapers showed a 12% gain.

Magazines are down 27% so far this year.

SMI gets its figures from the invoices at all of the major holding companies and most major independents, representing 95% of national brand ad spending. ■

B+C has partnered with always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv to bring you a weekly chart we call Promo Mojo: exclusive data showing the top five TV promos ranked by ad impressions. Our data covers the seven-day period through February 20.

NBC’s new crime thriller The Endgame tops the chart — ending the five-week reign of the Winter Olympics as TV’s most-promoted programming. Joining NBC is one other traditional broadcaster, ABC, which promotes the 20th season of American Idol in fifth place.

But the balance of our ranking is dominated by cable networks: AMC, which hypes the return of The Walking Dead (the second part of season 11) in second place; HGTV, which builds excitement for the third season of 100 Day Dream Home in third; and Food Network, which plugs the eighth season of Spring Baking Championship in fourth.

Notably, The Endgame promo spot has the week’s highest iSpot Attention Index (116), meaning viewers were on average highly likely to watch it all the way through (vs. interrupting it by changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV).

1) The Endgame, NBC

Impressions: 322,684,795

Interruption Rate: 1.15%

Attention Index: 116 (16% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 97%, Local 2%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $4,252,911

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $1,289,945

2) The Walking Dead, AMC

Impressions: 271,036,985

Interruption Rate: 2.19%

Attention Index: 102 (2% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 97%, Local 1%, VOD/OTT 2%

In-network Value: $577,065

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $724,211

3) 100 Day Dream Home, HGTV

Impressions: 242,647,663

Interruption Rate: 1.30%

Attention Index: 94 (6% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 98%, Local 1%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $484,806

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $407,016

4) Spring Baking Championship, Food Network

Impressions: 227,889,432

Interruption Rate: 1.09%

Attention Index: 111 (11% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 99%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $736,285

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

5) American Idol, ABC

Impressions: 197,501,152

Interruption Rate: 1.71%

Attention Index: 97 (3% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 92%, Local 7%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $1,111,323

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $181,294

* Data provided by iSpot.tv, TV Ad Measurement for Disruptive Brands *

For more information about Promo Mojo — including the chart positions of promos beyond the top five — contact mediapartnerships@ispot.tv.

Impressions: The total impressions within all U.S. households including National Linear (Live & Time-shifted), VOD plus OTT, and Local.

Attention Score: Measures the propensity of consumers to interrupt an ad play on TV. The higher the score, the more complete views. Actions that interrupt an ad play include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV.

Attention Index: Represents the Attention of a specific creative or program placement vs. the average in its respective industry. The average is represented by a score of 100, and the total index range is from 0 through 200. For example, an attention index of 125 means that there are 25% fewer interrupted ad plays compared to the average.

Impression Types: Impression types tracked include National (Live + Time-shifted), Local, VOD & OTT. See below for further details.

In-Network Value: Estimated media value of in-network promos.

Out-of-Network Spend: The estimated amount spent on TV airing time for this promo's spots during a given date range.

National: Live: A national promo which was viewed during live linear television broadcast or same day, via DVR or on-demand.

Local: A promo that was aired during a local ad break slot.

VOD: This includes promos that run in on-demand content past three days (i.e. do not contain the linear promo load).

OTT: On-demand streaming content (i.e. Hulu, Roku, Fire TV Stick, Chromecast).

The Winter Olympics from Beijing reached 163 million people across linear and streaming television, according to iSpot.TV, a measurement firm that worked with NBCUniversal.

Viewers watched 41.8 billion minutes of Olympic programming across platforms. 

There were 27,4 million streaming viewers, with 66%, or 18 million viewers watching exclusively on NBCU’s Peacock or other streaming services, iSpot said. Another 9.3 million viewers watched the Olympics via both traditional TV and streaming. 

While traditional ratings were down, linear TV reached 75.1 million unique households, or about 61.6% of all U.S. households. Another 12.8 million households streamed Olympic programming. 

iSpot said the most viewed moment during the games was when Kallie Humphries won the gold medal for monobob. That came directly after the end of Super Bowl LVI, which was also broadcast and streamed by NBC and measured by iSpot.

iSpot.TV is one of the newer measurement firms using big data to offer alternative to Nielsen, which has dominated TV measurement for decades. 

Also: Analysis: Super Bowl Could Kick Off Media Measurement Multiverse Mess

One of iSpot’s specialties is measuring advertising on a second-by-second basis.. iSpot said that the Olympics averaged more than 1 billion ads delivered per day, generating 19.95 billion TV ad impressions in 18 days.

"Instead of using program ratings as a proxy for advertising intelligence, iSpot verified close to 20 billion impressions and enabled the market to contextualize that massive reach against a variety of factors, such as day part, competitive set, et cetera,” said iSpot CEO Sean Muller.

During primetime, Olympic programming had a 22% lower ad loads compared to programming on the other Big 4 broadcast networks, and delivered 262% more impressions per spot than the other three networks combined.

Commercials on the Olympics had a 98% completion rate, meaning that nearly everyone who saw an Olympic ad watched all of it. Completion rates are usually associated with digital advertising, where the average completion rate is about 50%.

Naturally, the advertising on the Olympics was tops in terms of share of voice at 12.3%, which was 307% higher than the No. 2 program. In primetime, Olympic commercials had a 30% share of voice among the broadcast networks.

Commercials for companies in 83 industries ran 603 unique ads during the Olympics. The 16,199 ad airing generated 7,383 minutes of ad time, including 1,678.5 in primetime.

Advertising in the Olympics had 12% higher engagement rates that the industry average during the games.

“The Olympics will go down as a watershed moment between the buyers and sellers of TV in that we finally had a new set of facts and language to assess the value exchange,” said Muller. “By lunch time the next day, both sides could verify the (significant) reach from streaming, analyze the overlap and see how the games got them into the homes of cord cutters.” ■

B+C has partnered with always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv to bring you a weekly chart we call Promo Mojo: exclusive data showing the top five TV promos ranked by ad impressions. Our data covers the seven-day period through February 13.

It’s no surprise that NBC promos for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Super Bowl LVI lead the chart — in first and second place, respectively. (This marks the fifth week in a row at No. 1 for the Winter Games.)

Meanwhile, Animal Planet’s adorable answer to the Big Game, Puppy Bowl XVIII, gets some love in third place.

Closing out the chart: Fox News, which serves up a general promo for its news coverage in fourth place, and Hallmark Channel, which hypes the latest installment of The Wedding Veil trilogy of romantic movies in fifth.

Notably, the Fox News promo has the week’s highest iSpot Attention Index (168), meaning viewers were on average highly likely to watch it all the way through (vs. interrupting it by changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV).

1) 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC

Impressions: 284,848,829

Interruption Rate: 1.87%

Attention Index: 134 (34% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 94%, Local 4%, VOD/OTT 2%

In-network Value: $15,037,301

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $507,327

2) Super Bowl LVI, NBC

Impressions: 201,073,932

Interruption Rate: 1.62%

Attention Index: 108 (8% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 93%, Local 6%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $4,862,985

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

3) Puppy Bowl XVIII, Animal Planet

Impressions: 183,054,693

Interruption Rate: 1.61%

Attention Index: 112 (12% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 97%, Local 1%, VOD/OTT 2%

In-network Value: $918,181

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

4) Fox News general promo

Impressions: 165,848,474

Interruption Rate: 0.47%

Attention Index: 168 (68% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 100%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 0%

In-network Value: $354,087

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

5) The Wedding Veil, Hallmark Channel

Impressions: 159,030,649

Interruption Rate: 4.35%

Attention Index: 133 (33% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 99%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $798,387

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

* Data provided by iSpot.tv, TV Ad Measurement for Disruptive Brands *

For more information about Promo Mojo — including the chart positions of promos beyond the top five — contact mediapartnerships@ispot.tv.

Impressions: The total impressions within all U.S. households including National Linear (Live & Time-shifted), VOD plus OTT, and Local.

Attention Score: Measures the propensity of consumers to interrupt an ad play on TV. The higher the score, the more complete views. Actions that interrupt an ad play include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV.

Attention Index: Represents the Attention of a specific creative or program placement vs. the average in its respective industry. The average is represented by a score of 100, and the total index range is from 0 through 200. For example, an attention index of 125 means that there are 25% fewer interrupted ad plays compared to the average.

Impression Types: Impression types tracked include National (Live + Time-shifted), Local, VOD & OTT. See below for further details.

In-Network Value: Estimated media value of in-network promos.

Out-of-Network Spend: The estimated amount spent on TV airing time for this promo's spots during a given date range.

National: Live: A national promo which was viewed during live linear television broadcast or same day, via DVR or on-demand.

Local: A promo that was aired during a local ad break slot.

VOD: This includes promos that run in on-demand content past three days (i.e. do not contain the linear promo load).

OTT: On-demand streaming content (i.e. Hulu, Roku, Fire TV Stick, Chromecast).

B+C has partnered with always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv to bring you a weekly chart we call Promo Mojo: exclusive data showing the top five TV promos ranked by ad impressions. Our data covers the seven-day period through February 6.

NBC commercials promoting the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics top the chart (the example shown here focuses on star athletes including figure skater Nathan Chen and short track speed skater Maame Biney) — the fourth week in a row at No. 1 for the Winter Games.

Among traditional broadcasters, NBC is joined by CBS, which promotes the third season of Celebrity Big Brother in third place. But the rest of the top five is rounded out by cable networks: Hallmark Channel, which gives some love to The Wedding Veil trilogy of romantic movies in second place; Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, which promotes new mystery movie Cut, Color, Murder in fourth place; and Food Network, which hypes Guy’s Chance of a Lifetime, a new reality competition from Guy ​​Fieri.

Notably, the The Wedding Veil spot has the week’s highest iSpot Attention Index (128), meaning viewers were on average highly likely to watch it all the way through (vs. interrupting it by changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV).

1) 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC

Impressions: 645,536,383

Interruption Rate: 2.57%

Attention Index: 96 (4% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 93%, Local 6%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $9,115,266

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $1,071,718

2) The Wedding Veil, Hallmark Channel

Impressions: 264,905,542

Interruption Rate: 4.17%

Attention Index: 128 (28% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 100%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 0%

In-network Value: $1,400,606

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

3) Celebrity Big Brother, CBS

Impressions: 198,165,607

Interruption Rate: 1.17%

Attention Index: 126 (26% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 96%, Local 3%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $996,286

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

4) Cut, Color, Murder, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries

Impressions: 182,244,106

Interruption Rate: 2.89%

Attention Index: 110 (10% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 100%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 0%

In-network Value: $885,727

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

5) Guy's Chance of a Lifetime, Food Network

Impressions: 180,107,112

Interruption Rate: 1.49%

Attention Index: 103 (3% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 99%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $762,041

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

* Data provided by iSpot.tv, TV Ad Measurement for Disruptive Brands *

For more information about Promo Mojo — including the chart positions of promos beyond the top five — contact mediapartnerships@ispot.tv.

Impressions: The total impressions within all U.S. households including National Linear (Live & Time-shifted), VOD plus OTT, and Local.

Attention Score: Measures the propensity of consumers to interrupt an ad play on TV. The higher the score, the more complete views. Actions that interrupt an ad play include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV.

Attention Index: Represents the Attention of a specific creative or program placement vs. the average in its respective industry. The average is represented by a score of 100, and the total index range is from 0 through 200. For example, an attention index of 125 means that there are 25% fewer interrupted ad plays compared to the average.

Impression Types: Impression types tracked include National (Live + Time-shifted), Local, VOD & OTT. See below for further details.

In-Network Value: Estimated media value of in-network promos.

Out-of-Network Spend: The estimated amount spent on TV airing time for this promo's spots during a given date range.

National: Live: A national promo which was viewed during live linear television broadcast or same day, via DVR or on-demand.

Local: A promo that was aired during a local ad break slot.

VOD: This includes promos that run in on-demand content past three days (i.e. do not contain the linear promo load).

OTT: On-demand streaming content (i.e. Hulu, Roku, Fire TV Stick, Chromecast).

NBCUniversal, which has been active in the search for alternatives to Nielsen for audience measurement, is touting some metrics that could encourage its Olympic advertisers.

The fancy metrics show that NBC’s coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics has fewer commercials and that those commercials are working hard, the kind of data NBCU believes is important to companies writing big checks to sponsor the games.

The traditional counting of total viewers, even using NBCU’s Total Audience Delivery metric combining data from Nielsen and Oracle to capture all TV audiences, pointed to a 43% drop in viewing, compared to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago.

At a time when ratings are falling and cord-cutting is rampant, the decline is not a big surprise.

Also: NBCU Taps iSpot as First Cross-Platform TV Measurement Alternative to Nielsen

But according to one of the newer measurement companies NBCU is working with, iSpot.TV, Olympic primetime programming has a 14% lighter ad load than other primetime shows. At the same time, the Olympics are delivering 247% more ad impressions per unit than the three other big broadcast networks.

Those commercials are being watched all the way through. iSpot, which measures ads on a second-second basis, is telling NBCU that commercials within the Olympics have a 98% completion rate. That translates into a 13% lower ad interruption rate than ads on all TV programming.

iSpot also said the top-performing ad pod on February 4 happened at 9:41 p.m. ET as skater Karen Chen was getting off the ice. The ad most liked by consumers was for Delta.

The Olympics had a 23.01% share of voice on February 5, despite competition from the NHL All-Star Game, a Duke-North Carolina college basketball game, and an NBA game featuring LeBron James’ return after an injury. The Olympics nearly doubled the No. 2 telecast in terms of share of voice.

Data from two other measurement companies, Phoenix and EDO showed that for Olympic advertisers, brand recall and message memorability were up 53% and 70% versus norms for broadcast and cable ads. 

Ad likeability was 88% higher than norms and there was a 39% greater likelihood to search for brands that advertisers in the primetime Opening Ceremony. During the Tokyo Olympics, the likelihood to search was 20% higher and in Korea it was 32% higher, according to EDO. ■

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson narrates a film that’s part of the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony on NBC. The film is called I Dare You and it tells the story of how young athletes dare to pursue high-stakes Olympic events. Johnson narrates the film. 

Opening Ceremony live coverage begins at 6:30 a.m. ET February 4 on NBC and Peacock. The ceremony will later run in prime on NBC and Peacock, starting at 8 p.m., as will I Dare You. 

“Our athletes representing Team USA at this year’s Winter Olympics are some of the most talented and determined men and women in the world,” said Johnson. “They have dedicated their lives to their sport, pushing through injuries and personal setbacks, training through the toughest of conditions, to rise up and join the elite who have the opportunity to represent their country in the most iconic competition in the world. It’s my honor to once again be asked to participate in the presentation of the Opening Ceremony. And on behalf of our country, I will proudly introduce our U.S. Olympians to the world as they take that first step of defining their legacy.”

Olympic competition began February 2 with women’s hockey and mixed doubles curling. February 3 sees the U.S. women’s hockey team against Finland at 8:10 a.m. on USA Network and Peacock. There’s also figure skating, curling and men’s and women’s moguls skiing. 

Besides the Opening Ceremony, February 4 offers curling, figure skating, snowboarding, hockey and alpine skiing. 

The closing ceremony happens February 20. ■

B+C has partnered with always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv to bring you a weekly chart we call Promo Mojo: exclusive data showing the top five TV promos ranked by ad impressions. Our data covers the seven-day period through January 30.

A variety of NBC promos for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics top the chart (the example shown here focuses on team figure skating and the opening ceremony) — the third week in a row at No. 1 for the Winter Games.

Traditional broadcasters have the edge once again, with NBC joined by ABC, which promotes new family drama Promised Land in second place (for the second week in a row), and CBS, which hypes the third season of Celebrity Big Brother in fifth place.

Rounding out the ranking: Comedy Central, which celebrates the 25th season of South Park in third place, and Hallmark Channel, which gives some love to its new original romantic movie Butlers in Love in fourth.

1) 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC

Impressions: 667,079,754

Interruption Rate: 2.65%

Attention Index: 84 (16% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 92%, Local 7%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $2,902,134

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $905,522

2) Promised Land, ABC

Impressions: 298,024,601

Interruption Rate: 1.30%

Attention Index: 113 (13% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 94%, Local 4%, VOD/OTT 2%

In-network Value: $1,014,857

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $874,860

3) South Park, Comedy Central

Impressions: 218,371,063

Interruption Rate: 2.97%

Attention Index: 108 (8% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 97%, Local 2%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $754,349

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $203,188

4) Butlers in Love, Hallmark Channel

Impressions: 209,112,140

Interruption Rate: 5.51%

Attention Index: 96 (4% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 100%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 0%

In-network Value: $1,213,843

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

5) Celebrity Big Brother, CBS

Impressions: 198,083,097

Interruption Rate: 1.46%

Attention Index: 71 (29% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 98%, Local 1%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $3,780,844

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

* Data provided by iSpot.tv, TV Ad Measurement for Disruptive Brands *

Impressions: The total impressions within all U.S. households including National Linear (Live & Time-shifted), VOD plus OTT, and Local.

Attention Score: Measures the propensity of consumers to interrupt an ad play on TV. The higher the score, the more complete views. Actions that interrupt an ad play include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV.

Attention Index: Represents the Attention of a specific creative or program placement vs. the average in its respective industry. The average is represented by a score of 100, and the total index range is from 0 through 200. For example, an attention index of 125 means that there are 25% fewer interrupted ad plays compared to the average.

Impression Types: Impression types tracked include National (Live + Time-shifted), Local, VOD & OTT. See below for further details.

In-Network Value: Estimated media value of in-network promos.

Out-of-Network Spend: The estimated amount spent on TV airing time for this promo's spots during a given date range.

National: Live: A national promo which was viewed during live linear television broadcast or same day, via DVR or on-demand.

Local: A promo that was aired during a local ad break slot.

VOD: This includes promos that run in on-demand content past three days (i.e. do not contain the linear promo load).

OTT: On-demand streaming content (i.e. Hulu, Roku, Fire TV Stick, Chromecast).

Sports-oriented streaming service FuboTV said it made a deal with NBCUniversal that will give fuboTV subscriber access to NBCU’s 2,800 hours of coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games.

NBCU has dubbed its own streaming service Peacock as the home of the Olympic Games.

FuboTV subscribers will have access to linear coverage from NBCU’s linear networks including NBC, USA Network and CNBC. Subs will also be able to stream live and on-demand coverage from NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports App.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Comcast, which owns NBCU, said it is bringing the Olympics to all of its customers, via its X1 cable, Flex broadband and XClass TV platforms.

“We’re making it easy for fans across the country to find their favorite Winter Olympics events and witness the incredible stories of Team USA and athletes across the world," said Rebecca Heap, senior VP, consumer products and propositions, Comcast Cable. “Making this experience possible is our global technology platform which enables us to streamline innovation across our growing portfolio of entertainment devices, connecting millions of customers to the amazing moments and experiences only the Olympics can deliver.

Comcast users will be able to use their voice remotes to access the Olympics by saying “Olympics.”

X1 users will also find personalized experiences across devices, an interactive schedule of events and curated playlists. ■

NBCUniversal said that Dan Lovinger had been promoted to president, NBC advertising sales and partnerships.

Lovinger, who had been executive VP, sales and partnerships, NBC Sports Group, will be responsible for stewarding and monetizing all of NBCU’s Olympics and Paralympics business, including advertising sales for all games through 2032, according to a memo to staff from Linda Yaccarino, chairman, global advertising sales and partnerships at NBCU. Lovinger will also manage NBCU’s partnership with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Properties group.

In addition to the Olympics, Lovinger had been in charge of selling all of NBC’s sports portfolio, which this year includes the Super Bowl.

Also: NBCU Still Has Some Spots For Sale in Super Bowl

“To capitalize on this enormous opportunity and priority for our company, we’ve decided to create a dedicated leadership role focused on merging our sponsorship and media opportunities to create a truly One Platform experience for our Olympic and Paralympic partners,” Yaccarino said. “In other words, this newly created role is essential for our future — and Dan is the perfect person for the job.”

Lovinger will report to Yaccarino, along with Mark Marshall and Laura Molen, who also have the title president, advertising sales and partnerships.

The rest of NBCU’s sports sales will report to Marshall. ■

B+C has partnered with always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv to bring you a weekly chart we call Promo Mojo: Exclusive data showing the top five TV promos ranked by ad impressions. Our data covers the seven-day period through January 23.

Various athlete-centric NBC promos for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics top the chart (the example shown here focuses on American snowboarder Shaun White) — the second week in a row at No. 1 for the Winter Games.

Once again, traditional broadcasters have the edge, with NBC joined by ABC, which promotes new family drama Promised Land in second place, and CBS, which promotes crime procedural NCIS: Hawai’i in fourth and sitcom Ghosts in fifth.

Rounding out the ranking: TNT, which hypes the third season of its post-apocalyptic drama Snowpiercer in third place.

1) 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC

Impressions: 566,090,643

Interruption Rate: 2.56%

Attention Index: 75 (25% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 93%, Local 6%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $6,540,073

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $31,367

2) Promised Land, ABC

Impressions: 329,911,696

Interruption Rate: 1.60%

Attention Index: 90 (10% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 95%, Local 4%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $2,414,036

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $1,348,710

3) Snowpiercer, TNT

Impressions: 274,542,336

Interruption Rate: 2.04%

Attention Index: 96 (4% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 97%, Local 2%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $1,681,877

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $3,670,410

4) NCIS: Hawai’i, CBS

Impressions: 234,187,209

Interruption Rate: 1.24%

Attention Index: 77 (23% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 96%, Local 3%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $3,724,136

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

5) Ghosts, CBS

Impressions: 212,016,999

Interruption Rate: 1.14%

Attention Index: 70 (30% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 95%, Local 3%, VOD/OTT 2%

In-network Value: $3,955,745

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

* Data provided by iSpot.tv, TV Ad Measurement for Disruptive Brands *

Impressions: The total impressions within all U.S. households including National Linear (Live & Time-shifted), VOD plus OTT, and Local.

Attention Score: Measures the propensity of consumers to interrupt an ad play on TV. The higher the score, the more complete views. Actions that interrupt an ad play include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV.

Attention Index: Represents the Attention of a specific creative or program placement vs. the average in its respective industry. The average is represented by a score of 100, and the total index range is from 0 through 200. For example, an attention index of 125 means that there are 25% fewer interrupted ad plays compared to the average.

Impression Types: Impression types tracked include National (Live + Time-shifted), Local, VOD & OTT. See below for further details.

In-Network Value: Estimated media value of in-network promos.

Out-of-Network Spend: The estimated amount spent on TV airing time for this promo's spots during a given date range.

National: Live: A national promo which was viewed during live linear television broadcast or same day, via DVR or on-demand.

Local: A promo that was aired during a local ad break slot.

VOD: This includes promos that run in on-demand content past three days (i.e. do not contain the linear promo load).

OTT: On-demand streaming content (i.e. Hulu, Roku, Fire TV Stick, Chromecast).

House Republicans want some answers from NBCUniversal about whether the Chinese government has tried to exert any influence on its upcoming coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics. 

What they want to know includes how much NBCU has invested in the country, and whether the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought any changes to the way the games are covered or advertised.

That came in a letter Tuesday (Jan. 25) from House Energy and Commerce Committee Republican ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Communications Subcommittee ranking member Bob Latta (R-Ohio). They also want to know what safeguards the network has taken to ensure no forced labor is used by anyone associated with the coverage.

The legislators did not allege anything untoward but did seek a lot of information to make sure that was the case.

Also: ESPN Won‘t Send Staffers to Cover Olympics in Beijing

“Given China’s history of censorship and government control, and the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stands to benefit financially from NBCUniversal’s coverage of the games, we are concerned about the extent of influence the [Chinese Communist Party] may have over NBCUniversal’s coverage of the games,” the lawmakers said. 

They argued that as NBCU begins its coverage of the games, viewers had a right to know whether the programming has been influenced in any way by the International Olympic Committee or the CCP.

The legislators want the following information by February 7, though that is after the games have already begun on Februrary 4.  

1. “Please summarize your investment in the PRC.

2. “It has been reported that the IOC included human rights requirements several years ago in the host city contract for the 2024 Paris Olympics, but it did not include those guidelines for the 2022 Winter Olympics held in Beijing, China. Has the IOC or the CCP taken any steps to influence your coverage of the games relating to reported human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang province? If so, please explain.

3. “Has the IOC or CCP asked you to make changes in how they are covered or advertised on NBCUniversal programming? If yes, please list every instance in which the IOC or CCP requested a change, when the request was made, why the change was requested, if failure to accede to the CCP requests and suggestions would have resulted in negative consequences for your company and if you subsequently abided by their demands and why?

4. “Has the CCP suggested changes to public content displayed on NBCUniversal programming in either the United States or China? If yes, please list every instance in which the IOC or CCP requested a change, when the request was made, why the change was requested, if failure to accede to the CCP requests and suggestions would have resulted in negative consequences for your company, and if you subsequently abided by their demands and why.

5. “As part of your rights to broadcast the games, are you in any way precluded by the IOC or CCP from coverage that would be critical of the government of the PRC?

“Does the government of the PRC or the CCP have the ability to block your broadcast feed to the United States as they deem fit?

6. “Please list any connections your company has with the CCP, including the name of the official within the CCP and the capacity of their role in your organization.

7. “What kind of safeguards do you have in place to ensure that there is no forced labor, specifically in Xinjiang province, used by NBCUniversal or any of your partner suppliers or support services?

8. “Do you believe the CCP privately influenced or pressured the IOC in any way to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing?” 

Asked for comment on the letter and the info request,  NBCU responded by referencing comments last week by Molly Solomon, president, production, NBC Olympics, in a video presentation on coverage plans.

Solomon said that NBCU's Olympics coverage would "provide perspective on China’s place in the world and the geopolitical context in which these Games are being held," while the athletes remained the centerpiece of that coverage.

She pointed out that NBC News has a Beijing-based bureau and that NBC News would be there to cover the news out of China. "we have a record of not shying away from these topics," she said. " Not in 2008, the last time the Games were in China, in Sochi and PyeongChang. And most recently, we covered COVID and the athlete protests in Tokyo. We also plan to have reporters at all Beijing venues. If something happens, we’ll have our own cameras on site.”

ESPN said it will not be sending news personnel to China to cover the Beijing Winter Olympics in February because of concerns about COVID-19.

“The safety of our employees is of utmost importance to us,” said Norby Williamson, ESPN executive VP, event and studio production & executive editor. “With the pandemic continuing to be a global threat, and with the COVID-related on-site restrictions in place for the Olympics that would make coverage very challenging, we felt that keeping our people home was the best decision for us.”

Covering the Olympics from the U.S. will also be cheaper for Disney’s sports network.

Also: NBCUniversal Still Has Some Spots for Sale in Super Bowl

Comcast’s NBCUniversal has the rights to televise the Olympics and NBC Sports said it will have more people covering the Olympics from its Stamford, Connecticut, headquarters than it will have in China.

ESPN said it had planned to send four reporters to China. It had sent five staffers to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. 

Also: NBCU Will Stream All Winter Olympic Coverage on Peacock

“As was the case with the Summer Olympics, organizers have taken steps to make information and online interviews available for media outlets covering the Games remotely. ESPN has multiple reporters assigned to do so for both television and digital news platforms,” ESPN said.

ESPN’s website will have a special section dedicated to Olympics coverage and SportsCenter will be reporting on results and presenting Olympic information and features while working within video usage restrictions imposed by Olympic organizers and NBCU. ■

With two of the biggest events in sports coming in February, NBCUniversal said it has commercials remaining to sell in Super Bowl LVI and still needs to do some work to meet its ad-sales goals for the Beijing Winter Olympics.

During a presentation on Wednesday, Dan Lovinger, who was recently promoted to president, NBCU Ad Sales and Partnerships, said Olympic sales were pacing “exactly the same” as they had before the Pyeongchang, South Korea, games four years ago.

“We still have some work to be done between now and the end of the games, but we feel really confident that we’re going to achieve all of our goals,” he said.

NBC has about 100 advertisers signed up for the games. Returning advertisers are spending slightly more than they did four years ago, “which seems to indicate that they have faith in the franchise and they’re happy to be back,” Lovinger said.

There are also about 40 new advertisers in the Olympics and digital revenue is up double digits.

He said that the U.S. diplomatic boycott of the games hasn’t had much of an effect on sponsors, who get a positive rub-off from supporting the games and the athletes.

On February 13, NBC will start the day with Olympic events, switch to Super Bowl pregame programming, show the championship game, then return to the Olympics--something that hasn't happened before.

In terms of the Super Bowl, there seemed to be little change in the situation since NBC last updated its sales progress in September, when a handful of spots remained unsold. 

“We tend to hold a few units in our back pocket until the final game matchup is announced,” Lovinger said. Some matchups create better opportunities for creative executions, he said. “That optionality is there and we’ll be able to react with the last few units.”

Since the last time NBC had the Super Bowl in 2018, prices per 30-second spot are up about 20%, he said. Units have sold for as much as $6.5 million.

“If you're looking to reach 100 million people in an evening. There's really only one place you can go and that's the Super Bowl,” he said.

Lovinger noted that NFL football has been strong this year, especially relative to other programming. The economy is holding up and consumers are confident. “When consumers consume, advertisers advertise,” he said.

This year, movie studios are advertising again. Gambling and crypto marketers are stepping up their activity and old standby categories such as automotive, quick-serve restaurants and beverages have been spending, he said.

In September, NBC said it had sold all but five spots for the Super Bowl and was holding onto those on purpose in order to find the best ways to monetize them.

NBC said it sold one 30-second commercial for $6.5 million.

Fox last year said it is taking advantage of the strong market by beginning to sell commercials in the Super Bowl it will broadcast in 2023. ■ 

B+C has partnered with always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv to bring you a weekly chart we call Promo Mojo: exclusive data showing the top five TV promos ranked by ad impressions. Our data covers the seven-day period through January 16.

Various athlete-centric NBC promos for the Beijing Winter Olympics lead our chart (the example shown here focuses on American cross-country skier Jessie Diggins). Meanwhile, last week’s chart-topper, a promo from Magnolia Network (formerly DIY Network) for Fixer Upper: Welcome Home, slips to second place.

Once again, traditional broadcasters have the edge in our top 5, with NBC joined by ABC, which promotes upcoming family drama Promised Land in third place, and CBS, which promotes new medical drama Good Sam in fifth.

Rounding out the ranking: Hallmark Channel, which gives some love to its original romantic movie The Perfect Pairing in fourth place.

Notably, the Beijing Winter Olympics spots have the week’s highest iSpot Attention Index (121), meaning viewers were on average highly likely to watch them all the way through (vs. interrupting them by changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV). As always, chart positions may be updated in iSpot’s database as additional airings information becomes available.

1) Fixer Upper: Welcome Home, Magnolia Network (formerly DIY Network)

Impressions: 377,353,740

Interruption Rate: 1.52%

Attention Index: 108 (8% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 94%, Local 1%, VOD/OTT 5%

In-network Value: $840,361

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $165,328

2) 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC

Impressions: 314,278,101

Interruption Rate: 1.84%

Attention Index: 100 (0% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 89%, Local 10%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $846,420

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

3) Abbott Elementary, ABC

Impressions: 264,487,393

Interruption Rate: 1.45%

Attention Index: 97 (3% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 93%, Local 5%, VOD/OTT 2%

In-network Value: $975,349

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $452,467

4) Ghosts, CBS

Impressions: 219,957,721

Interruption Rate: 2.29%

Attention Index: 106 (6% fewer interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 93%, Local 5%, VOD/OTT 2%

In-network Value: $744,471

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

5) Kids Baking Championship, Food Network

Impressions: 217,498,043

Interruption Rate: 1.77%

Attention Index: 96 (4% more interruptions than avg.)

Imp. Types: National 99%, Local 0%, VOD/OTT 1%

In-network Value: $461,160

Out-of-network Est. Spend: $0.00

* Data provided by iSpot.tv, TV Ad Measurement for Disruptive Brands *

Impressions: The total impressions within all U.S. households including National Linear (Live & Time-shifted), VOD plus OTT, and Local.

Attention Score: Measures the propensity of consumers to interrupt an ad play on TV. The higher the score, the more complete views. Actions that interrupt an ad play include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV.

Attention Index: Represents the Attention of a specific creative or program placement vs. the average in its respective industry. The average is represented by a score of 100, and the total index range is from 0 through 200. For example, an attention index of 125 means that there are 25% fewer interrupted ad plays compared to the average.

Impression Types: Impression types tracked include National (Live + Time-shifted), Local, VOD & OTT. See below for further details.

In-Network Value: Estimated media value of in-network promos.

Out-of-Network Spend: The estimated amount spent on TV airing time for this promo's spots during a given date range.

National: Live: A national promo which was viewed during live linear television broadcast or same day, via DVR or on-demand.

Local: A promo that was aired during a local ad break slot.

VOD: This includes promos that run in on-demand content past three days (i.e. do not contain the linear promo load).

OTT: On-demand streaming content (i.e. Hulu, Roku, Fire TV Stick, Chromecast).

NBCUniversal announced that Peacock will be home base for its coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics next month.

Every event at the games will be live streamed and available to Peacock Premium subscribers, including the opening and closing ceremonies, and all events airing on broadcast and cable television.

NBCU, part of Comcast, is looking to the Olympics’ one of TV’s biggest events, to give a boost to Peacock, which has been a laggard in the streaming race.

“As the streaming destination of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Peacock will offer the ultimate fan experience all in one place,” said Kelly Campbell, president, Peacock. “From every live event and gold medal moment to exclusive daily shows, channels and original documentaries, viewers will be able to easily catch-up and keep up on all the action throughout the Games with our comprehensive Olympics hub on Peacock.”

The move follows the shutdown of NBCSN, NBCU's sports network, at year end.

“We are excited to offer NBC Olympics’ storytelling and complete streaming coverage of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games on Peacock,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer, NBC Olympics & Paralympics. “This approach provides the American audience with a dynamic, easy-to-use Olympic viewing hub where not a single moment, live or on-demand, will be missed.”

During the third quarter, Comcast reported that Peacock lost $520 million. The company did not update its number of subscribers or signup, but NBCU CEO Jeff Shell said Peacock was “headed in the right direction.” ■