NBCUniversal launches comprehensive NBCUnified platform

At CES, NBCUniversal announced the launch of NBCUnified, a first-party identity platform that pulls together consumer data from across the company’s wide-ranging touchpoints, including premium video content, ecommerce, sports, subscriptions and theme parks.

NBCUnified is made up of three main components – the NBCU ID, the Data Marketplace and Partner Integrations. Marketers will be able to reach consumers with deep knowledge based on the first-party data and insights that come from more than 230 million monthly users across all of NBCUniversal’s commercial channels.

The NBCU ID, which was first introduced last March, has over 150 million unique person-level IDs, and is on pace to grow to over 200 million by 2023. The Data Marketplace taps into thousands of consumer behavior attributes and can be combined with a network of licensed third-party providers.

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The Partner Integrations piece, according to the company, acts as a “fully interoperable platform” that is privacy-minded and allows marketers to responsibly benefit from third-party data from agency and tech partners, as well as NBCUniversal’s own proprietary clean rooms.

Why we care. We’ve already seen how some large national retailers like Best Buy and Walgreens have launched advertising platforms that leverage their vast store of customer data for outside advertisers.

Because of NBCUniversal’s focus on entertainment, their NBCUnified offering is more diverse and potentially engaging to consumers than feeding retail customers additional ads in-store or on the store’s app. But the same overarching principle applies. First-party data is more valuable than ever, and if you want to leverage that value, there are ways through data partnerships with right tech partners to unlock that data for paying advertisers.