NBC Working With Olympic Advertisers To Maximize Effectiveness

Faced with selling advertising for a delayed Olympic Games, NBC is bolstering its ad sales efforts with a platform called the Olympic Ad Engine that is designed to help advertisers create more effective messages when they advertise. NBC execs demonstrated the Olympic Ad Engine for a group of reporters on a Microsoft Teams call yesterday. On the call, network execs did not provide an update on Olympic ad sales, saying that details about sales for both the Tokyo and ’22 Beijing Games would be made available in the coming weeks.

NBC created the ad engine from an in-depth study of the ads it carried during the ’16 Rio and ’18 Pyeongchang Games. NBC has come up with the “best practices” for how advertisers should approach the Game -- specific elements to be included or avoided. NBC said it was prepared to launch the ad engine ahead of the Tokyo Games’ original dates last summer but pushed it back following the delay to ‘21. NBC has had early talks with a handful of brands and will now go more broadly to market its Olympic Ad Engine. Execs said they will partner with Olympic advertisers throughout the creative process to test ideas, storyboards and completed ads.

NBC Sports Group Exec VP/Ad Sales Dan Lovinger said the net designed the platform as part of its efforts to be a thought leader in the industry. “We think CMOs need tools to make really tough decisions,” said Lovinger. “When you have scale this size, the biggest hurdle for CMOs is often the creative hurdle, because of the opportunity for ridicule and scrutiny of creative. So we thought this was the best way to help people make these tough decisions.” 
 
To build the platform, NBC analyzed 671 ads from the last two Olympics, examining everything from an ad’s length, tone, sentiment and featured elements, like music, food, animals, athletes, voiceovers or text on screen. NBC identified nearly 900 individual ad elements, which were then used to determine a broad formula for making ads more effective. 

For instance, according to NBC’s research, ads intended to raise awareness should be comedic and feature a celebrity, but avoid focusing on music or past awards. Brands hoping to maximize engagement should run longer ads featuring new products but omit animated characters or celebrities.