TV providers and streamers’ real competition isn’t each other, it’s social video. Or at least that’s what the president of Comcast Advertising, James Rooke, said during an interview on Wednesday at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. The ad exec was speaking about the company’s Monday launch of “universal ads,” a solution that lets marketers buy TV ads from a variety of media companies in one place.
Launch partners for universal ads include A+E, AMC Networks, DIRECTV, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Roku, TelevisaUnivision, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Xumo, with more said to be on the way. The inventory for universal ads will be streaming inventory to start, with plans to add solutions for linear TV inventory over time.
The goal is to simplify buying TV ads to better compete with how easy it is to buy ads across social video sites like YouTube. In other words, buying streaming TV ads should be as easy as buying ads on social video, where there’s not that much of a learning curve to get started.
“There are millions of advertisers out there that have built their businesses on social video, on YouTube advertising, and others, that haven’t had the ability to access the power of the content [and] the advertising solutions that come from companies like these and others as simply as they would like to,” Rooke said. “And as we speak to those advertisers who built their businesses on social video, they’re looking for new qualified audiences.”
They’re also looking to have their business associated with content that is brand-safe, something social video can’t always provide as past advertiser boycotts of YouTube and other social sites have proven.
With the launch of universal ads, the companies are hoping to make their “premium” video another category considered by those same marketers who today advertise on social video, whether that’s unscripted or short-form video like those found on YouTube or more social video, like those found on Meta’s apps, the Comcast exec noted.
This is key because the majority of the competition and growth in the industry was coming from social video, Rooke said — and not necessarily from other TV providers or even streamers, like Netflix and Amazon.
“While these companies and us, we compete in certain ways, the real competition is coming from new providers that are going after TV dollars … So if you look at where the growth is, all of us are doing really well in terms of growing our CTV [Connected TV] businesses — our streaming businesses — and the app revenue that comes from it, but the majority of growth overall is going to social video, and that’s not slowing down,” Rooke pointed out.
That led Comcast to its decision to chase net new dollars from where the growth is taking place, as opposed to going after the same ad dollars as before.
YouTube has been working for years to capture more TV ad dollars, particularly as its service became more popular on TVs, which now accounts for nearly half its viewership.
