NBCU Expands Content, Ad Deal with Twitter, Starting with Paris Olympics

• by Wayne Friedman , Yesterday

Looking to generate even greater value in advertising and awareness for Olympics/Paralympic Games content, NBCUniversal has expanded its deal with social media site Twitter.

NBCU says the deal begins with next year's Summer Olympic coverage in Paris.

Key for its endemic advertising partners, NBC says Twitter will provide “incremental reach and scale.” The announcement was made at Twitter’s Newfront presentation on Wednesday.

From February 2024 through the start of the Olympics in July 2024, Twitter will feature NBCU’s pre-Games Olympic-related competition highlights, U.S. Olympic Team Trials content, as well as daily athlete and/or event video content.

In addition, at the games, NBC Olympics will produce a daily live show on Twitter with original Olympic coverage highlights, athlete interviews and Olympic aficionado interactions.

Two years ago, NBCU and Twitter struck a global content and advertising deal. The two companies have been partners in deals going back to 2013.

In 2020, NBC said it ran 25% more campaigns for its marketers on the social media site than the year before.

For the most recent Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, NBCU averaged 11.4 million Nielsen-measured prime-time viewers for the 16 day event -- a record low for any Olympics. NBCU pulled in an estimated $1.7 billion in national TV advertising sales, according to iSpot.tv.

Before this, in 2021, NBCUniversal pulled in $1.8 billion in advertising for the Tokyo Summer Olympics, according to the company. Average viewership was at 15.6 million -- then an all time low for any Olympics.