NBCU, Kargo Partner On Mobile Ad Offering

NBCUniversal and Kargo today unveiled a sales partnership that joins NBCUniversal’s media and digital portfolio with Kargo’s advertising technology capabilities and exclusive media alliances to create a unified mobile advertising offering based exclusively on premium content.

With this new partnership, the two companies say they will approach the upfront marketplace together with exclusive mobile advertising solutions for agency partners and advertisers that offer access to more than 170 million mobile users over more than 80 premium publisher properties across the mobile web and apps. Their combined portfolio represents the largest brand-safe platform in mobile, they say.

“It’s not possible to overstate the significance of this partnership; we are now able to offer brand advertisers an unparalleled platform for branding in a mobile-first world,” said Harry Kargman, founder-CEO of Kargo. “Marketers have been looking for alternative and incremental solutions for doing creative branding on mobile devices, and our combination of scaled premium content and beautiful, research-tested ad creatives is the answer.”

As part of this partnership, NBCUniversal will make its portfolio of mobile properties available to advertisers over the Kargo platform.

“Collaborating with Kargo to create opportunities for advertisers together in a trusted, brand-safe environment will make it easier for mobile marketing campaigns to scale,” said Linda Yaccarino, NBCU chairman, advertising sales and client partnerships. “Now, we can expand marketers’ reach across the highly valuable mobile environment bringing the best of premium content and audience targeting through one point of sale.”

Premium content offers advertisers high-quality environments superior to many other digital marketing channels. The partnership between NBCUniversal and Kargo also “assures superior ad viewability as well as brand safety through placement in trusted editorial and content free of fraudulent traffic,” the two say.

This newly combined offering will include integrations by accredited third-party measurement providers including Moat, IAS, Nielsen, comScore and others to validate performance.

Additionally, the two companies will develop advertising products and data targeting capabilities together, taking advantage of NBCUniversal’s Audience Studio and Kargo’s Editorial Graph and SHOPS platform. 

All of these new offerings to advertisers will be supported by custom joint research and insight efforts to illustrate marketing brand and sales performance.