NBCU Expands Advertising Options in Anticipation of Winter Sports Programming

designed to help boost advertiser access to a blockbuster sports programming year for NBCU. Beyond airing February’s Super Bowl, NBC is airing the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, while Telemundo has the rights to the Spanish-language coverage of the FIFA World Cup. And let’s not forget about the other programming tentpoles across baseball, basketball, football, and soccer that the company has rights to.

Live Total Impact, a new cross-platform tool, is set to scale across events, including what NBCU has dubbed its “Legendary February” sports roster, and it retargets live event viewing audiences across NBCU properties. Plus, there’s an expansion of Live in Browse, which automatically previews live content on Peacock’s homepage, to more sports programming and live entertainment properties like Saturday Night Live.

For advertisers, there’s good news too. Live sports programmatic buying will give advertisers private marketplace biddable access to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games through partnerships with Amazon DSP, Viant, and other ad-tech vendors. Bird’s the word! Other new advertising tools focus on bulking up offerings on Peacock. For example, Arrival Ads, an interactive ad format, will allow brands to show up on a user’s Peacock profile page, as soon as they enter the platform.

In addition, vertical video buying options and programmatic pause ads buying will become available to advertisers starting in 2026. NBCU is the first large premium AVOD publisher to bring full-screen programmatic pause ads to advertisers across its platforms, including Peacock.

As advertisers continue to seek real-time insights and proof that their ad dollars are working for them, NBCU is rolling out a number of tools designed to offer more analytics. Performance Insights Hub, an intelligence platform, uses data from ad-tech vendors like LiveRamp, VideoAmp, and Kochava to display data related to audience insights, campaign delivery, and in-flight ad performance.

Moreover, partnerships with Instacart and Walmart Connect aim to leverage retail media data from both companies. Through these partnerships, NBCU is using shopper data to measure cross-platform live-sports campaigns and illustrate to advertisers that their investments are moving products off shelves.

And as NBCU gears up for a busy year of live programming, it’s also rolling out Contextual Targeting in Live, an offering that uses AI to monitor live content and match ads with relevant moments. This feature could be particularly useful for advertisers interested in activating against news, especially as the network prepares for a busy 2026 with the midterm elections approaching.

All in all, NBCU is gearing up for an exciting year in 2026 with a range of new advertising offerings to help advertisers reach audiences across its platforms.