NBCU Shakes Up Ad Sales Days Before Upfront; Linda Yaccarino Departs, Mark Marshall Named Interim Chief

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Many TV networks have struck measurement deals with VideoAmp, one of a handful of companies eager to provide an alternative to Nielsen’s tabulation of audiences. Now a company that buys TV time for blue-chip advertisers has done the same. Horizon Media, a large media-buying firm that works for clients including Corona and the National Football League, will use VideoAmp’s audience-measurement tools to help negotiate and transact ad deals between select clients and sellers for national linear TV inventory. Horizon will also use VideoAmp for planning, analytics, and measurement. “There has been a more meaningful movement this year to actually participate with alternative currencies and transact on them,” says David Campanelli, Horizon’s chief investment officer, in an interview. The bulk of the deals, he says, “are still happening on advanced audience targets, versus what we commonly think of with Nielsen ratings, which are demo and impressions counting.”

New Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino is acknowledging the impending competition coming her way this summer as Instagram works on a text-based app.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Andrew Ross Sorkin is the co-creator of the Showtime series “Billions,” but he isn’t really known for drama in his professional life, just financial reporting. So it came as something of a surprise on Monday, when the CNBC and New York Times journalist got up on stage at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall to tout some of the dramatic fare that NBCUniversal was able to cobble together for the advertisers and media buyers assembled in the audience. It was all part of the industry’s annual “upfront,” when U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their advertising inventory before the release of their next cycle of programming.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Noah Lyles might be one of the nation’s fastest athletes, but there’s one thing he was falling behind on: managing his social-media profile. The Olympic runner knows how important it is for fans to see clips of him in action, particularly with the Paris Games about a year or so away. But securing rights to video footage and putting it up in an intelligent way across different digital venues can be difficult, he says. “That can be very stressful, and take away from the ability to perform.” NBCUniversal wants to offer athletes some assistance. The media company is launching a new production effort called Fortius that aims to help Olympic athletes burnish their brands in the months leading up to the next Games. The company has many reasons to do so. NBCU and its parent, Comcast have invested heavily in U.S. rights to the Olympics broadcasts, having agreed to pay $7.75 billion for broadcast rights to the events between 2021 and 2032. That programming, especially the hours that air in primetime, rely heavily on in-depth features on the athletes that often require NBC Sports crews to meet with them several times over the course of their training.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The upfront presentation that looks most like traditional TV came from a company that likes to tell investors, advertisers and consumers how it’s leapfrogging that entire business. Netflix on Wednesday showed dozens of scripted series and movies that could support advertising — if only Madison Avenue would take a chance and bet on its nascent efforts to sell commercials. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chris Hemsworth and Julia Roberts were only some of the actors whose efforts could be tied to advertising. Counterparts like NBCUniversal and Fox Corp. were hard-pressed to do the same earlier this week. “We are just getting started,” said Peter Naylor, vice president of global advertising sales at Netflix.

Elon Musk welcomed Twitter’s new CEO into the fold as he held court at Tesla’s annual meeting in Austin today, sounding genuinely relieved to offload some of the burden of running the beleaguered social media company he reluctantly acquired last fall.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large From the moment an animated “Ted” opened the NBCUniversal upfront, voiced by Seth MacFarlane prior to the writers strike, it was clear this was going to be an abbreviated event. For starters, until a week ago, this was still going to be Linda Yaccarino’s Radio City Music Hall show. But with Yaccarino off running Twitter (“Ted” making a crack about the crazies now at Twitter earned the biggest inadvertent laugh of the morning), it was up to Mark Marshall, NBCU interim chairman, global advertising & partnerships, to make the pitch to advertisers. “In all of our conversations leading up today, regardless of client or category, there has been one constant…this is going to be a very important year for your businesses,” Marshall said, counting 32 pharma launches, 60 auto releases (including 46 electric vehicles) and over 100 movie releases (“which puts us back to pre-pandemic levels”) this year. “We know this is a competitive year. And here at NBCUniversal, we are built for these moments.”

The upfronts may be an annual ritual steeped in TV and streaming advertising, but NBCUniversal gave film more than a fleeting moment in the spotlight during its pitch to media buyers Monday morning.

WGA strike.“We are grateful for the contribution writers make to our company and respect their right to demonstrate it may take some time, but I know we will eventually get through this and the result will be a stronger foundation on which we can all move forward together,” Chairman of NBCUniversal Mark Lazarus said during the New York event. Unsurprisingly, the event scaled back on its celebrities, relying on more executives and reality TV stars to introduce its clips and segments.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “I don’t know but I’ve been told, NBC has a heart that’s cold,” Writers Guild of America pickets shouted outside Radio City Music Hall Monday, making some noise about the writers strike in front of NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation to advertisers. Approximately 200 pickets, some members of SAG-AFTRA joining the WGA in solidarity, used other chants personalized for the occasion, including, “NBC, you’re no good, pay your writers like you should,” to try to get the attention of those in attendance at the event, which is used to launch NBC’s fall schedule and woo advertisers into spending their dollars on spots with NBCU brands. The WGA is on Day 14 of a strike after failing to ink a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) before the clock ran out May 1.

Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, wasn’t on the production call sheet until very recently for the company’s upfront at Radio City on Monday morning.

The NBCUniversal Upfront kicked off a week of events in New York amid a writers strike.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN on Wednesday broadcast one of the most controversial news events of the year, a runaway town hall interview with former President Donald Trump, and advertisers like Subaru and Fidelity Investments went along for the ride. There are new questions about whether all of Madison Avenue will do so in the future. The nation’s big TV-news outlets are about to enter what should be a healthy cycle. The closer the U.S. gets to a presidential election, the more audiences tend to watch. CNN, for example, has indicated it expects to telecast more primetime town halls with candidates (last week’s lured nearly 3.31 million viewers), while Fox News Channel is expected to broadcast the Republican Party’s first primary debate in August.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Plenty of money will be spent on TV ads during this year’s “upfront” — but probably not enough to fuel the economics of all the nation’s big media conglomerates. TV executives and media buyers usually can’t agree on much at this time of year, when U.S. TV networks try to sell the bulk of their advertising inventory in advance of their next cycle of programming. Buyers and CMOs insist TV advertising prices are too high, while TV sales honchos demand a premium for ads that are seen by more people all at once than commercials accompanying a random binge-watch or a YouTube influencer’s streamcast. In 2023, however, both types of hagglers are in agreement: Madison Avenue will greet the industry’s annual ad-sales session not with open wallets, but with tighter purse-strings.

Linda Yaccarino sent out her first tweets Saturday night since being named Twitter CEO, assuring the platform’s users that she is committed to the job and even sharing her aim of building “Twitter 2.0.”“I see I have some new followers,” Yaccarino tweeted to her more than 319, 000 followers along with a wave emoji. “I’m not as prolific as @elonmusk (yet!), but I’m just as committed to the future of this platform.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In what may have been an highly unconventional job interview, NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino hosted a discussion with Elon Musk about Twitter’s content policies and approach to working with marketers at an industry conference one month before Musk announced that he’d hired her as the social network’s CEO. The April 18 keynote conversation was billed as a talk about Musk’s “Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships” at MMA Global’s Possible marketing event in Miami. Yaccarino told Musk that marketers want “protection for their ad campaigns,” with content moderation policies ensuring that “provocative speech” is properly labeled. She applauded Twitter’s announcement last month to promote “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” under which the company said it will limit the reach of tweets that violate policies concerning hateful conduct and violent speech.

Twitter has a new CEO.

Yaccarino, a graduate of Penn State University, served as the chair of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, acting as «the strategic and operational bridge across the entirety of NBCUniversal's global networks, properties, and business units,» according to her profile on LinkedIn. Her role involved monetizing the company's networks, digital and streaming platforms, distribution and commerce partnerships, and client relationships.

Even without a once-in-a-generation strike or a Twitter bombshell, next week would already pose a challenge to media companies making their annual upfront pitches to ad buyers in New York.

Wall Street Journal report that she is in talks to become Twitter’s new chief executive officer. “It has been an absolute honor to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” she said in a statement. “We’ve transformed our company and the entire industry—and I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished together, and grateful to my colleagues and mentors, especially Brian Roberts, Mike Cavanagh and the entire NBCU leadership team.”Since joining NBCU in 2011, Yaccarino’s team has generated more than $100 billion in ad sales, expanded the company’s reach globablly, helped launch Peacock, and made massive investments in data and technology capabilities.