Dive Brief:

• NBCUniversal announced on March 18 that Dentsu International will become the first agency partner of NBCUnified, according to a press release. NBCUnified is the media conglomerate's first-party data and identity platform that unites consumer touch points across its portfolio.
• The partnership will integrate person-level and household-level IDs from Dentsu's M1 platform and consumer data products, plus those from its advertisers, into NBCUnified's platform. The first-of-its-kind integration will allow for matches with NBCU IDs, comprising 150 million person-level IDs tied to 80 million households in its initial release.
• In its latest move around data, technology and measurement in advance of upfront season, NBCU is partnering with an agency holding group that can use its first-party data to boost the targeting and analysis of its campaigns for advertisers.

Dive Insight:

NBCUniversal continues to roll out news about the agency partnerships that build on its offerings around data, technology and measurement. Dentsu's first-of-its-kind integration with NBCUnified connects the media company's vast array of first-party data with data from the agency's M1 platform as well as that of advertisers. Such integrations around data are key for advertisers as a tightening data privacy landscape — including the forthcoming deprecation of third-party cookies — makes it tougher to target and track campaigns.

"Identity is increasingly becoming the new currency for the advanced television and digital video industry. With this partnership, NBCUniversal and Dentsu are taking a leadership position in accelerating our joint ability to allow clients to transact on identity and first-party data across our premium offerings at a level of scale and transparency never before possible," John Lee, NBCUniversal's chief data officer, said in the press release.

The partnership will allow Dentsu and its media agencies to leverage NBCUnified's Consumer Match and Audiences offerings to find and target higher-performing custom audiences across NBCU TV, video and display inventory. The agency's clients will also be able to access analytics and measurement capabilities afforded by clean room environments provided by Denstu and NBCU. Last week, Omincom's media services division Omnicom Media Group was announced as the first agency to integrate with the NBCUniversal Audience Insight Hub, the company's proprietary data clean room environment.

NBCUniversal launched NBCUnified at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2022. True to its name, the platform unifies the company's consumer touch points across movies, entertainment, news, sports, e-commerce, subscriptions, theme parks and more. NBCUnified will serve as the "backbone" of NBCUniversal's measurement initiatives, which have also included the selection of iSpot.tv as a preferred measurement partner.

The announcement of partnerships with Dentsu and Omnicom arrives ahead of NBCUniversal's One22 developer conference on March 22 and upfront on May 16. The media conglomerate has tried to lead the way in ushering in a new era of measurement, using the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics as a showcase of its new cross-platform approach.