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NBCU pushes toward Winter Olympics' record $900M in ad sales

Pacing ahead of where it was with the 2014 Sochi Olympics, NBCUniversal Media LLC is pushing toward record advertising sales against next month’s Winter Games from Pyeongchang.

Whereas NBCU generated national advertising revenues in the mid-$800 million range with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, Dan Lovinger, executive vice president of advertising sales at NBC Sports Group, told reporters on a Jan. 11 conference call that "we expect to exceed $900 million in national ad sales, which would be a Winter Games first. Advertisers continue to value the scale and the dominance of the Games and are particularly proud to associate their brands with the Olympics."

Comcast's programming unit racked up total ad sales revenues in excess of $1.1 billion from Sochi, when sales on NBC-owned stations and other revenues were factored in. NBCU paid $963 million for U.S. rights to the 2018 Winter Games from South Korea, after outlaying $775 million for the 2014 Winter Games from Russia.

Coupled with the Feb. 4 Super Bowl LII and related coverage, which NBCU said will generate the single-day advertising record by a single media company with some $500 million, the company anticipates it will record $1.4 billion from the two marquee sports events in February.

Although he would not provide an overall sell-through level for the 18 days of the Games, spanning Feb. 8 through Feb. 25, Lovinger said some days are "completely sold out" and some are not. "But overall, we're extremely well sold." He added that NBCU "believes ratings will be somewhere close to Sochi's ratings. So if we're growing our revenue against relatively stable or flattish ratings, your sell-outs go up."

NBC (US)'s prime-time coverage from Sochi averaged a 12.3 household rating and 21.4 million watchers.

In the past, NBCU has sold the Olympics on TV household metrics. This time it is using Total Audience Delivery, melding broadcast and cable watching, as well as streaming viewership from NBC apps on tablets, smartphones and connected TVs.

Centered on persons 2+, Lovinger called TAD "a demographic that you can pivot from linear to digital and back again. It's the only demo that sort of is common to both linear and digital."

To that end, Lovinger said that if NBC Olympics sees a spike in consumption on its digital platforms, it can move commercial messages there and "deliver on a campaign promise more effectively. ...It's going to allow us, I think, to be much more effective at delivering, regardless of where the viewing comes from."

Although Nielsen Holdings is the primary media researcher providing the data, Lovinger noted that some marketers have used other third-party measurement to secure their Olympic buys.

Relative to guarantees, he said they vary by advertiser and package: "As far as what that CPM guarantee is, it varies by advertiser depending on what events and days that they're participating."

As is the case with the Super Bowl, most of the Olympic ad sales are coming via deals fashioned across broadcast, cable and digital platforms. But like the NFL title game, NBC is also selling digital-only Games packages for the first time against the Pyeongchang quadrennial.

Lovinger added that "we're just starting to turn our marketing spigot on, which I'm sure you'll be hearing more about and seeing more across NBCUniversal and even off of some of our properties in the media landscape. So we're very, very pleased with intent to view and awareness is picking up, as it should be at this point, about a month out."

Asked about potential make-goods in the Super Bowl or the Games, Lovinger replied: "It remains to be seen. I imagine to some degree, as always in these events, [it could occur]. But only if it makes financial sense for the advertiser and us."