Dive Brief:

• NBCUniversal unveiled a new solution that unifies first-party data from across its portfolio of TV networks, streamers, theme parks and more, according to an announcement. NBCUnified was also showcased as part of the Consumer Electronics Show today.
• Living within One Platform, NBCUnified is built around three pieces of technology: NBCU ID, data marketplace and partner integrations. Working off NBCU ID, NBCUnified already wields 150 million unique person-level identifiers and 50 million household identifiers that marketers can match against their own data sets to better target customers and optimize campaigns.
• NBCUnified will additionally provide the "backbone" for NBCUniversal's measurement initiatives moving forward, per the announcement. It's the latest sign that media stakeholders see an opportunity to fortify their ad businesses as first-party data and related solutions grow more desirable in the face of looming third-party cookie deprecation.

Dive Insight:

NBCUniversal is making another bid to streamline its marketing services, this time with an eye on creating a scaled first-party data solution. NBCUnified pulls from a wide array of properties ranging from the company's Peacock streamer to Universal Theme Parks. All together, NBCUniversal claims its portfolio reaches 230 million adults and generates 1 billion interactions per month.

A core component of NBCUnified is the NBCU ID that was first revealed at the network's One21 showcase last March. The identity offering accumulates proprietary first-party data and matches it with second and third-party data sets brought to One Platform. One Platform is NBCUniversal's broad attempt to meld its ad-tech and sales operations across TV and digital video — a sign that streaming is becoming a more significant driver of its business.

NBCUniversal hopes to grow its stores of unique personal identifiers to 200 million by 2023, the announcement said. Third-party cookies are expected to be deprecated by Google sometime that year, a timeline that's set off a scramble among marketers looking for alternatives to what has, to date, been a bedrock method of targeting consumers online.

NBCUnified additionally works with a data marketplace that pairs first-party insights with those of licensed third-party providers, as well as a partner integrations feature that connects various data sources, or "spines," together in a privacy-minded fashion, whether they be agencies, industry consortiums or NBCUniversal's own data clean room. The NBCUnified solution is the first to come out of the media behemoth's dedicated enterprise data organization led by Chief Data Officer John Lee, who joined NBCUniversal from Dentsu's Merkle agency in July.

Competitors are pursuing similar goals as data-minded services receive a higher premium from advertisers. Disney, which similarly owns a diverse array of properties, including theme parks, has a Disney Select platform that unites its first-party consumer data and audience modeling capabilities.