An unusual coalition of the willing — top executives from NBCUniversal and Fox Corp. — has stepped up. and Warner Bros. Discovery, DirecTV and Comcast — stage at CES on Wednesday to discuss their latest efforts to compete with Big Tech.
Universal Ads, as the new project is called, was announced Monday as a collaborative effort to combat the dominance of Google, Meta and other tech giants when it comes to “SMBs,” the business term for small and medium-sized businesses. The primary goal is to make premium video more widely available.
Mark Marshall, president of advertising and partnerships at NBCU, cited a real company called Joe's Pizza during the panel discussion several times, half-jokingly but sincerely, as an example. “For Joe's Pizza in my hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut – shout out to Joe's – they never had the option to advertise at all.” Sunday Night Football. Now they can.” He added that The Farmer's Dog is another national brand that will benefit from the global advertising opportunity.
The group's members are closely aligned, said Ryan Gould, executive vice president of sales – streaming, digital and advanced advertising at WBD. “We're all trying to avoid walled gardens and democratize access to premium video,” he said. Jeff Collins, president of ad sales at Fox, agreed: “We talk a lot about competition…but when we talk about small and medium-sized businesses, we're not competing there.” This means that “coming together has great meaning.”
Meta's game-changing decision to end fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram “certainly strengthens the value proposition, there's no doubt about it,” said Comcast Advertising President James Rock, who was recognized on stage as a key architect of global advertising. He said many SMEs “have increasing concerns” about the unruly social media environment. “As they mature their brands, it makes sense for them to graduate” to premium video.
Gould said he was “putting my hat on CNN” to discuss developments in Meta. “The reality is we don't need to moderate our content,” he said of the news network. “The unfortunate truth is that for the three of us with extensive news properties, brands have moved away from the news.” But as dollars shift toward digital and social, he said, the shift of Meta,
Rock said he expects more partners to join Universal Ads. He said it is not a competitor to Trade Desk or Google's buy-side platform. “This is a completely new category” that is “largely complementary” to existing platforms.
The fragmentation between traditional linear networks and streaming, streaming and digital “creates significant pressure on advertisers and agencies,” Marshall said. “It has become difficult for them to cope in an easy way.” He added that Meta and other social media platforms have “developed an easy button,” but until now “we haven’t had that one solution in premium video.”
Amy Lever, director of advertising at DirecTV, emphasized the fact that Universal Ads will work with the pay-TV operator's technology stack, which has just become capable of programmatic buying at scale. She acknowledged that panel director and CNBC correspondent Julia Boorstin described the group of participants as “enemies.” But she said all the executives involved “need to tip their hat to James” for leading Universal Ads, which she said would solve a lot of the problems it faces. “Honestly, I call him a lot and scream about all the problems I need to solve,” she joked.
