Comcast blends NBCU, Sky advanced ad tech for global sales pitch

NBCUniversal and Sky, both owned by Comcast, on Monday announced AdSmart, a global advanced advertising platform that will combine solutions and tech from both companies.NBCU’s Audience Studio advanced targeting solutions will be a part of the offering alongside Sky's addressable advertising tools. Comcast said this is its first joint advertising initiative since acquiring Sky in 2018. The company beat out Fox in a U.K. regulatory auction for Sky’s publicly traded shares and shortly after agreed to buy Fox’s 39% ownership stake in the European pay TV operator.Now Comcast is blending the advertising technologies of NBCU and Sky to offer services like linear ad spend optimization, which will use Comcast set-top box data in the U.S. and Sky set-top box data in the U.K. for a total data set of more than 50 million households. NBCU said contextual alignment is currently a pilot program that can allow for artificial intelligence-based contextual media planning for TV by aligning brand messaging with relevant television scenes across national programming.