NBCUniversal Kicked off a Monumental Year for Advertisers at CES 2025 – Unveiled Industry-First Partnerships and Cutting-Edge Innovations That Will Set the Company Apart this Selling Season
Against the backdrop of an unprecedented line up of programming, NBCUniversal is accelerating advertising effectiveness for marketers with new engagement and optimization capabilities, and revealed new data that proves TV is a performance engine for brands.
January 10, 2025
NBCUniversal kicked off the New Year at the Consumer Electronics Show 2025 in Las Vegas with a full slate of programming with executives from across the company and industry-leading announcements. From January 7-10, over 130,000 attendees witnessed how NBCU is pioneering the future with innovative technology and game-changing tools for marketers everywhere.
In the News: Leading the Charge in Innovation
On Monday, January 6, to celebrate NBC’s upcoming 100th anniversary, the company unveiled new engagement capabilities in ad innovation and creative optimization in support of its monumental content slate in 2025 - 2026, as well as new data partnerships further demonstrating how TV is an unmatched performance marketing engine for all sized brands.
NBCUniversal also announced its partnership with Comcast’s Universal Ads, an industry-changing, cross-publisher advertising solution providing marketers with simplified access to some of the most prestigious video publishers today. This one-stop TV advertising platform, which launches in Q1, will drive full-funnel performance for advertisers of all sizes while opening new demand channels for publishers.
Additionally, John Jelley, Senior Vice President, Product & User Experience, Peacock, spoke exclusively with Slate to discuss new mobile features Peacock is piloting starting this month based on learnings from the Paris Olympics and other interactive tests. These Mini-Games and “Can’t Miss Clips” vertical video playlists will help fans indulge their obsessions around many of the platform’s most popular titles in a way that’s fun and super simple and all in one place.
On the Ground: Dominating the Conversation
Making their mark on the global tech conference, NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships executives - Mark Marshall; Alison Levin, President of Advertising & Partnerships; Karen Kovacs, President of Advertising & Partnerships; Ryan McConville, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Advertising Technology & Operations; Sujatha Mamidibathula, Senior Vice President of SMB Growth Team; Ann Scheiner, Executive Vice President of Agency Partnerships; Josh Feldman, Chief Marketing Officer; and Kevin Lappen, Senior Vice President of Sports Partnerships and Digital Sales - took the stage at various key locations across the conference, including the Brand Innovators Marketing Leadership Summit, OpenAP Audience Summit, MediaLink’s Marketing Reinvented, The Female Quotient Equality Lounge, and more throughout the week. Topics ranged from first-party data, to strategic partnerships across categories, to the power of live content for advertisers to name a few.
The showstopper of the week was Comcast’s Universal Ads Great Minds panel, “TV’s New Easy Button: Simplifying for the Next Era in Media,” on Wednesday, January 8 featuring Mark Marshall and James Rooke, President, Comcast Advertising. The session was moderated by CNBC’s Julia Boorstin and featured a powerhouse lineup of senior executives from Fox, Warner Brothers Discovery and DIRECTV. The group publicly discussed Monday’s announcement in depth and showcased how publishers are coming together to present a singular platform for brands of any size in any category to advertise on television — all with the ease and familiarity of buying on social.
Mark Marshall highlighted how Comcast NBCUniversal is investing in its longstanding commitment to innovation with Universal Ads as the solution to a fragmented premium video advertising marketplace.
NBCUniversal also had a robust presence at the Variety Entertainment Summit – elevating our thought leadership through key speaking engagements with Mark Marshall, Alison Levin, and John Jelley.
John Jelley discussed storytelling through innovation in his panel alongside Amazon Ads and other industry peers, while Alison Levin dove into how NBCUniversal is maximizing monetization across platforms alongside leaders from Amazon Web Services, Netflix, TelevisiaUnivision, Vizo and Warner Brothers Discovery.
To close out the summit and our CES programming, Mark Marshall sat down for a fireside chat with Maria Taylor, Host of "Football Night in America” and Big Ten College Countdown, to explore how NBCU is enhancing the viewer and advertiser experience across its diverse portfolio, leveraging the unprecedented 2025-26 content slate for brands, capitalizing on the power of live sports, and more.
On the media momentum and opportunities for advertisers in women’s sports, Marshall emphasized that “This isn’t a moment, it’s a movement.”
NBCUniversal harnessed CES 2025 as the launching pad for the most monumental two years of premium content any media company has ever experienced, and proved why this company is the premiere go-to-market opportunity for the benefit of advertisers, consumers, and the media ecosystem as a whole.
To close out the summit and our CES programming, Mark Marshall sat down for a fireside chat with Maria Taylor, Host of "Football Night in America” and Big Ten College Countdown, to explore how NBCU is enhancing the viewer and advertiser experience across its diverse portfolio, leveraging the unprecedented 2025-26 content slate for brands, capitalizing on the power of live sports, and more.
On the media momentum and opportunities for advertisers in women’s sports, Marshall emphasized that “This isn’t a moment, it’s a movement.”
NBCUniversal harnessed CES 2025 as the launching pad for the most monumental two years of premium content any media company has ever experienced, and proved why this company is the premiere go-to-market opportunity for the benefit of advertisers, consumers, and the media ecosystem as a whole.
