NBCU, Fox, WBD, DirecTV & Comcast Execs Say Their Unusual Ad Collaboration Can Help Close The Gap With Big Tech

An unusual coalition of the willing – senior execs from NBCUniversal, Fox Corp., Warner Bros. Discovery, DirecTV and Comcast – took the stage at CES on Wednesday to discuss their latest effort to compete with Big Tech.

Universal Ads, as the new venture is called, was announced Monday as a collaborative effort to combat the domination of Google, Meta and other tech giants when it comes to “SMBs,” the trade term for small and mid-sized businesses. The essential goal is to make premium video more widely available.

NBCU ads and partnerships chief Mark Marshall cited a real business called Joe’s Pizza during the panel discussion numerous times, half-jokingly but sincerely, as an example. “For Joe’s Pizza in my home town of New Canaan, CT – shoutout to Joe’s – it’s never been an option for them to advertise on Sunday Night Football. Now they can.” The Farmer’s Dog is another national brand that would benefit from the Universal Ads opportunity, he added.

Ryan Gould, EVP, Sales – Streaming, Digital, and Advanced Advertising at WBD, said members of the group are closely aligned. “We’re all trying to avoid walled gardens and democratize access to premium video,” he said. Agreed Fox ad sales chief Jeff Collins, “We talk a lot about competition … but when we talk about SMBs we’re not competing there.” That means that “coming together makes a ton of sense.”

Meta’s game-changing decision to end fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram “certainly strengthens the value proposition, no question about it,” said James Rooke, President of Comcast Advertising, who was acknowledged onstage as the primary architect of Universal Ads. Many SMBs “have increasing concerns” about the unruly environment of social media, he said. “As they mature their brands, it makes sense for them to graduate” to premium video.

Gould said he was “putting my CNN hat on” to discuss the developments at Meta. “The reality is, we don’t need to moderate our content,” he said of the news network. “The unfortunate truth is that for three of us with scaled news properties is that brands have moved away from news.” But as dollars shift toward digital and social, he said, the shift of Meta, X and others toward far less content moderation “is a real issue for all social platforms” in the ad marketplace.

Rooke said he expects more partners to join Universal Ads. He said it is not a competitor with Trade Desk or Google’s buy-side platform. “This is an entirely new category” that is “highly complementary” of existing platforms.

Fragmentation among traditional linear networks, streaming, FAST and digital “creates a great stress on advertisers and agencies,” Marshall said. “It’s just become hard for them to transact in a way that is easy.” Meta and other social platforms “have developed an ‘easy button,'” he added, but until now “we didn’t have that single solution in premium video.”

Amy Leifer, Chief Advertising Officer at DirecTV, emphasized the fact that Universal Ads will work with the pay-TV operator’s tech stack, which has just become capable of wide-scale programmatic buying. She acknowledged panel moderator and CNBC correspondent Julia Boorstin’s description of the group of participants as “frenemies.” But she said all participating execs “need to tip our hat to James” for spearheading Universal Ads, which she said will solve a lot of problems she has. “And frankly, I call him a lot and yell about all of the problems I need to solve,” she joked.