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NBC Universal urges advertisers to jump aboard mobile

NEW YORK -- NBC Universal revealed that there is a great opportunity for advertisers since recent case studies have shown that mobile users are increasingly watching full-length video from their mobile phones.

Paul Thenstedt, midwest sales director at NBCU Digital Media, told the audience at IAB's Marketplace-Mobile that delivering the right message to the right person at the right time means making mobile a priority in every overall marketing initiative. He took the audience through several studies that conveyed how current audiences are spending more time than expected watching mobile video.

"NBC Universal's diverse portfolio hits at eight of the top 10 categories of mobile video consumption," Mr. Thenstedt said. "We also have around 5.4 million unique viewers, meaning we have 20 percent share of mobile video."

"Our overall strategy and advice to everyone is to build a great product or offering so that our consumer has the best possible experience," he said. "Then we simply listen to the audience and play to the strength of our medium."

Mr. Thenstedt made one point clear throughout the presentation: take advantage of mobile.

He explained to the audience that on May 1, NBC Universal became the first mobile publisher to use Kiptronic's Web-based infrastructure to serve dynamic video advertisements on a mobile platform.

It seems that IAB had good reason to appoint NBC Universal as a presenter since the company hits the categories of comedy, weather, sports, news, movie trailers, entertainment news, animated video and reality video making it an advertiser's dream.

NBC Universal chose Kiptronic because it always delivers optimized content along with the fact that it works well with DART's ad platform which dynamically switches out ads, leverages processes and creative assets that agencies have and provides detailed reporting.

One study reviewed by Mr. Thenstedt showed that NBC.com and television are the main drivers to the mobile site, which is optimized and designed to be as similar as possible to the online site, making users much more comfortable.

NBC also saw that 48 percent of users were watching NBC television from their mobile device.

Not only that, but users were not adopting NBC's incremental video format but instead, watched entire episodes, one sitting at a time, from their mobile device.

This means that people are giving the same attention to their mobile as they would television, expecting the same advertisement interruptions, and will never be forced to leave the room and thus the TV because the TV is in their hands.

"One of the most important things that we found was that most viewers found the commercial spots in their mobile video less annoying than those that they see on television," Mr. Thenstedt said. "Something about 15 seconds as opposed to 30 or 45 seconds seems much more attractive to consumers."