NBCUniversal to launch multi-channel targeted marketing division

Comcast’s NBCUniversal is launching a new division, Audience Studio, designed to allow marketers to target audiences across TV, digital and social media marketing channels, the Wall Street Journal (link is external) reported.

The key component of Audience Studio is a data management platform that marketers can use to combine their first-party data with NBCU data and third-party data.

Denise Colella, senior vice president of data platforms and strategy for NBCU, will lead the new division, according to the Journal.

Dive Insight:

Audience Studio is combining four relatively new NBCU ad products that reach different marketing channels: Audience Targeting Platform for TV, NBCUx for digital, NBCU+ Powered by Comcast for set-top boxes, and Social Sync for social media.

By combining these products, the new division simplifies advertising across all channels using the same targeting data. Previously marketers had to manually navigate each product to execute a multi-channel campaign.

Krishan Bhatia, executive vice president of business operations and strategy at NBCU, told the Wall Street Journal, “If before you had this Chinese Wall between groups, with this, you are permeating that. Going forward, a brand can now align their data inputs and outputs.”

Although Audience Studio should help marketers looking to reach NBCU’s diverse audience, the division does play into industry fears that the large media corporations are beginning to create “walled gardens (link is external)” of data and tools – not unlike the current state of affairs with Google and Facebook on the digital side.

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