NBCUniversal’s Winter Olympics expect record number of new programmatic advertisers

For NBCUniversal, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics aren’t just another Games — they’re a showcase for the future of advertising. The company is expanding programmatic access to test how live sports advertising could scale ahead of future tentpole sporting events, including the LA28 Olympic Games. After Paris delivered the most advertiser participation ever for a Summer Games, NBCUniversal is anticipating a surge of new brands entering the Olympic marketplace for the Winter Games — taking place from Feb. 6 to Feb. 22.Josh Noval, senior vice president of Olympic sales, points to three drivers fueling this growth: timing, audience scale and a programmatic strategy designed to lower the barrier to entry for advertisers that historically couldn’t afford — or plan for — an Olympic buy.

Unlike traditional Olympic buys, which require long lead times and sizable commitments, programmatic allows advertisers to seize opportunities. They can buy against live moments as audiences materialize in real time — like if Team USA is on a tear, with ice hockey star Hilary Knight leading the team to an overtime victory against Team Canada.

“Programmatic is one of the big pushes for us because we understand that there are a lot of advertisers that like to be able to be opportunistic, take advantage of scale whenever they see it appear in the marketplace,” Noval said. “So we want to be able to allow people to tap into Olympic inventory, really, whenever they have the ability to do so.”

Programmatic as an on-ramp to the Olympics

NBCUniversal first opened Olympic inventory to programmatic buyers during the 2024 Paris Games, initially partnering exclusively with The Trade Desk. For Milan Cortina, that access has widened to seven different DSP partners.

The number of advertisers now buying into NBCU’s Peacock has grown by 31% for Milan Cortina since the Paris Olympics, with the majority of NBCU brand partners (85%) now buying digital media for the Games.

“What I thought was most interesting about Paris was over 90% of the advertisers that showed up programmatically did not have direct buys with us,” Noval said. “So this was genuinely new advertisers that were coming into the Olympic Games that we didn’t have any [direct] orders from.”

The San Diego Zoo, for example, was a first-time Olympic advertiser during the Paris Games that saw 97% completion rates with their programmatic buy.

For the Milan Games, Peacock is rolling out similar viewer-facing experiences including Gold Zone, multiview on mobile and shoppable “virtual concessions.”

If direct advertiser deals are any indication, it looks like these Winter Olympics will take the gold in programmatic interest. Noval said Milan Cortina has brought in direct deals with 200 advertisers, whereas the previous Winter Olympics saw just over 100 advertisers. NBCUniversal said this is the network’s “highest grossing Olympics ever.”

A legendary February

Milan Cortina is benefiting from what NBCUniversal is calling a “legendary February” — a compressed stretch of 17 days that includes the Super Bowl, the NBA All-Star Game and the Olympics. From an advertising perspective, that concentration creates rare audience aggregation across sports fandoms.

“I’m most excited about this idea of cross-pollination of audiences,” Noval told The Current. “You’re going to have this big audience that’s tuning in for the biggest single day sporting event that we have in our country, and then they’re going to go right into Olympics programming.”

That scale matters for programmatic buyers accustomed to chasing reach across fragmented platforms. All three direct ad opportunities have sold out, with final spots for the Super Bowl climbing to $10 million for a 30-second spot across linear and digital.

For NBCUniversal, the stakes will extend beyond this winter. NBCUniversal views Milan as another proof point in a broader shift toward programmatic live sports, acting as a springboard moving into LA28, the first domestic Summer Olympics since 1996.

“One of the things we’re really trying to do at NBCUniversal, in general, is open up more of our live programming, especially sports, to the programmatic landscape,” Noval said.

“Hopefully as more opportunities continue to come online and people feel more comfortable with spending their money this way opportunistically, I think the platform will only continue to grow with the Olympics and our other sports properties.”

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.