NBCU announces Currency Council to cement its role as an ad measurement leader

The news: More than 10 major brands including General Motors, PepsiCo, T-Mobile, Marriott Bonvoy, and Wayfair have joined The Currency Council, a new measurement initiative announced by NBCUniversal on Wednesday.

• At a press event, measurement executive vice president Kelly Abcarian laid out the media giant's mission to evaluate new currencies, develop new methods for transacting, and establish new workflows for the media planning and buying process.
• “Together with our clients, we’ll accelerate the momentum toward unified measurement and a multicurrency future and start transacting on these new currencies while creating new transactional models,” wrote Abcarian in a blog post announcing the news.
• The initiative was launched after what NBCU calls “the industry’s largest new current test and learn,” which involved 67 advertisers and 158 brands across 12 advertiser categories. Brands that participated had an average of 546 million total impressions.

The announcement was made as part of an overview of the evolution of One Platform, NBCU’s ad tech, data, and measurement offering that reaches 230 million adults monthly in the US and 1 billion people worldwide. The platform reaches consumers at numerous endpoints, including Peacock, greater than 350 digital properties, more than 200 networks, and five theme parks.

Why it matters: Advertisers care about making their dollars go as far as possible, and waste has been a problem for ages. That problem gets magnified when budgets are being highly scrutinized.

Our take: Industry insiders haven’t been enthusiastic about measurement giant Nielsen for some time now, and its difficulties early in the pandemic only heightened those concerns (that’s part of why its Media Ratings Council accreditation remains suspended).

By positioning itself as a leader in the multicurrency future, NBCU is likely to attract incremental ad dollars and establish itself as a safer haven for advertisers.

Go further: Our Advanced TV 2022 report covers what’s next for addressable, programmatic, and connected TV. Read it now.

This article originally appeared in Insider Intelligence's Marketing & Advertising Briefing—a daily recap of top stories reshaping the retail industry. Subscribe to have more hard-hitting takeaways delivered to your inbox daily.

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