NBCUniversal is the latest media and entertainment company to rework its organizational structure to accommodate a declining linear TV environment and a booming streaming advertising market.
On Tuesday, Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s head of ad sales and partnerships, outlined a new structure that will combine brand and agency teams and build infrastructure to try to bring in small and medium-sized businesses that have traditionally been priced out of TV but have spent heavily on platforms like Facebook and Google.
The changes include new or reworked roles for several top executives, including Maggy Chan, who moved from the BBC last month and will oversee global advertising sales and partnerships; Mark Marshall, who will lead a centralized national sales force; Frank Comerford, who will lead local advertising strategy; and Dan Lovinger, who leads a sales team dedicated to the Olympics.
Meanwhile, Tom Winiarski’s team will be tasked with bridging linear and digital inventory, while Krishan Bhatia, who will oversee the company’s One Platform technology stack. Josh Feldman, who had been CMO of the division, will oversee the advertising sales division’s events (such as the upfronts, One23, performances at Cannes) and product innovations such as shoppable advertising.
Perhaps most notable is the pressure from Yaccarino’s division to compete with Google and Meta in the pursuit of smaller deals.
Yaccarino writes that the company is building an “SME growth team” specifically to pursue those kinds of partners, and is looking for someone to lead that team.
“This team will partner with Mark Marshall and be fully focused on creating more resources so businesses of all sizes can advertise alongside the best content in the world,” writes Yaccarino.
The new SME team builds on a plan that Bhatia discussed of The Hollywood Reporter late last year, when Peacock is planning a self-serve advertising platform for smaller marketers this year.
“In the past, television was the domain of maybe 1,000 to 2,000 marketers,” Bhatia said. THR at that moment. “We have a whole ecosystem of other marketers that are directly targeting consumer brands, e-commerce brands, performance marketers, local businesses, who buy media because they clearly need to drive their business, but they measure it in a different way. And they need a lower entry point. And they need tools and capabilities that are more self-centered.”
NBCUniversal’s shake-up is the latest in a series of changes to ad sales over the past year.
NBCUniversal does part of a consortium that includes Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery who plan to bundle streaming viewing data to advance the multi-currency launch for 2024.
And other companies are also reorganizing.
Warner Bros. Discovery restructured under head of advertising sales Jon Steinlaufwhich merged the existing Discovery and WarnerMedia teams with an emphasis on both linear TV and streaming products such as HBO Max.
At Paramount, John Halley took over the advertising sales department promises to merge the linear assets (such as CBS) with streaming companies such as Pluto and Paramount +.
Disney is expected to see its own shakeup in the coming weeks with CEO Bob Iger effectively dismantling the DMED division. It’s not immediately clear how the ad sales and partnerships team will be restructured.
But with Disney+’s new ad-supported tier as a top priority, streaming will likely only become more central to the company.
And, of course, Netflix has jumped into the ad space with a splash, pre-scheduling a presentation and poaching a few high-profile Snap execs to head up their sales department.