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NBC Ad Sales For '18 PyeongChang Games Pacing Ahead Of Last Winter Olympics

NBC Sports Group’s top ad sales exec predicted it will sell more advertising around the '18 PyeongChang Games than it did for the '14 Sochi Games. In a Wednesday afternoon presser, NBCUniversal Exec VP/Sales & Marketing Dan Lovinger said ad sales for PyeongChang already are pacing ahead of Sochi, though he declined to offer specifics about how much they are up. Rather than offering a ratings guarantee off of primetime broadcasts, NBC is basing its guarantees on the Total Audience Delivery metric that combines broadcast and cable ratings with streaming usage. Lovinger said the day of the primetime broadcast window “being the sole metric is over.” Part of the reason for the expected ad sales increase comes from social media. Lovinger said NBC expects to make “eight figures” from social media advertising around the Games. Yesterday, the net announced a deal with Snapchat that will have Buzzfeed co-produce content. NBC execs said they were not prepared to capitalize on the Snapchat arrangement for the '16 Rio Games because the deal was struck too close to the event. NBC also is expecting to benefit from the fact that it will produce the Super Bowl just days before the '18 Games begin. Lovinger said the PyeongChang Games will get “significant exposure” during Super Bowl LII, including the possibility of live reports from South Korea during the game. Lovinger said that the Super Bowl and Olympic audiences do not overlap a lot. He noted that in '14, NBC drew a combined 212 million viewers for the Sochi Games and Super Bowl XLVIII (Seahawks-Broncos), but only 101 million viewers watched both (Ourand & Fischer, Staff Writers).

NEW METRIC WAS NEEDED: AD AGE's Jeanine Poggi noted NBCU was "caught off guard" during the Rio Games. After making "bullish predictions regarding viewership of the games," NBCU found that it "hadn't fully accounted for the rapid change in TV viewership habits with more consumption moving online" (ADAGE.com, 3/29). Lovinger said of using the Total Audience Delivery metric, "We’re better to able better pivot from linear to digital and back again, depending on where we see the viewership spikes coming from on a day-to-day or event-to-event basis." ADWEEK's Jason Lynch wrote Lovinger will "have his hands full next year," as NBCU-owned Telemundo also will carry games from the FIFA World Cup in Russia. The last time the Super Bowl and Winter Games were on the same net was '92. NBC’s PyeongChang primetime coverage "begins four days after the Super Bowl." The PyeongChang Games will be the "first Olympics ad sales Lovinger has overseen" (ADWEEK.com, 3/29). In Philadelphia, Bob Fernandez noted the Super Bowl and the Olympics together are "likely to generate" more than $1B in ad revenue for NBC parent company Comcast (PHILLY.com, 3/29).

ABOUT TIME: In L.A., Tom Hoffarth writes for NBC, "'live' has always seemed to have its own parochial urbane definition." Now, it is finally "relenting to its literal interpretation." Hoffarth: "The joke has been on NBC Sports when it comes to Olympics coverage for decades." It is a "better-late-than-never shift in philosophy that made NBC look so out of touch" when carrying the '10 Vancouver and '02 Salt Lake City Games with a "three-hour delayed presentation for TV viewers in the West" (L.A. DAILY NEWS, 3/30).

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