COLOGNE \u2013 It\u2019s taken a few years, but NBCUniversal is seeing audience buying becoming a mainstream choice for more advertisers across product and service categories.<\/p>\n
This comes three years after the media company began offering its Audience Targeting Platform during the Upfront negotiating period and after the second Upfront with its Audience Studio<\/a> suite of data offerings.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things we found coming out of this year\u2019s upfront is that clients are making audience buying a regular part of their planning process,\u201d Denise Colella, SVP, Advanced Advertising & Product Strategy, NBCU says in an interview with Beet.TV at the DMEXCO<\/a> advertising and trade show.<\/p>\n Things have gained traction on the audience-buying front after a few slow years following the Upfronts. In the early going, by the time agencies and clients ended their negotiations and then had to figure out who they wanted to target and what data to use, they just weren\u2019t ready to make deals.<\/p>\n This year, NBCU\u2019s audience-buying commitments have tripled in the third quarter because clients have their data and are ready to go.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the fact that they\u2019re ready so soon after the Upfront shows us this has become mainstream and a regular part of their buying process,\u201d Colella says.<\/p>\n Having decided to make all of its unsold inventory available through its data products, NBCU saw early uptake by such vertical categories as finance, insurance, automotive and travel.<\/p>\n \u201cBut over the past year or so, we\u2019ve seen it expand into all verticals, everything from pharma, to CPG to studios. \u201cAt this point, I believe all verticals are looking at this as a viable and in some cases better way to buy.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisers are still mixing traditional demo buys with audience targeting. \u201cMore and more we\u2019re seeing the audience budgets increase.\u201d<\/p>\n While NBCU has been offering video-on-demand addressable ads, in the coming year it will test linear addressable with parent Comcast.<\/p>\n