As new ad formats make their way to connected TV, NBCUniversal is opening up the Peacock app’s entry screen as its newest CTV inventory for advertisers, while also expanding access to Pause Ads via programmatic buying.
Want to know more about new CTV ad formats? Stay tuned for StreamTV Insider’s upcoming special report on the rise of interactive CTV ads.
NBCUniversal executives previewed the media company’s latest ad innovations and data and measurement tech during a press briefing this week ahead of CES in Las Vegas next month. To learn about NBCU’s newest capabilities for contextual ad targeting announced Wednesday – including against real-time moments in live content like sports – read here.
New ad format Arrives on Peacock
In what NBCU claims is a first-to-market in the industry, next year it will launch a new format on Peacock called “Arrival Ads,” which take premium placement as the first thing a user sees when they enter the streaming app.
Alison Levin, president of Advertising & Partnerships at NBCU, said this format allows brands to get in front of viewers at what is “truly the front door” for Peacock.
There, brands can take advantage of a placement on Peacock’s start screen, which is where one picks the user profile of who’s watching before viewers even get to the platform’s home screen and content.
The user profile page represents the entry point for all of Peacock’s 41 million streaming subscribers into the app and a location that's free from other content or visuals vying for attention. As such, Levin said the inventory provides “massive reach” as well as a “beautiful canvas” on which to create with brand partners. And those brands get to own the first impression as soon as viewers enter the platform.
It's another layer in NBCU’s ad innovation strategy, which aims to help make CTV more of a full-funnel vehicle for advertisers – starting with upper-funnel like awareness and reach that TV is known for and moving them down to metrics like consideration and ultimately conversion with subsequent units, exposures or formats.
And with new measurement and data capabilities, it’s partly about proving the value of CTV investments and working to give TV advertising credit that it doesn’t always get (where instead a search platform like Google might get last-click attribution for a purchase or website visit, when really it was a TV ad that sparked a consumer’s interest in the first place).
When aggregating the data from five-year-old Peacock, Levin said partners who have run a sponsorship creative plus a video ad have seen a 60% increase in the return on ad spend (ROAS) versus those that just run creative.
“So that equation is working and we’re so excited to continue to double down on this in 2026,” Levin said.
Putting an ad on the front-door user profile page of Peacock also essentially opens up net-new ad inventory for NBCU to sell, as the digital real-estate would otherwise sit idle and unmonetized.
Note: Arrival Ads are not yet available in-market. The image above is for illustrative purposes only and not from a live campaign.
Peacock’s Arrival Ad is a somewhat similar idea to home screen or menu ads that have also started to show up on CTV apps and device platforms, where brands or other content partners can get in front of consumers before they decide on what to watch.
On the home screen ad front, Xumo (a joint venture between NBCU-parent Comcast and Charter) released a study Tuesday that found 58% of survey respondents felt home screen ads fit in seamlessly with their viewer experience compared to 50% that feel so about standard video ads, while 59% felt the home screen format was unique or novel.
Peacock Pause Ads go programmatic
Another new format that provides publishers with net-new ad inventory and has gained popularity on CTV is the Pause Ad, which appears when a user opts to take a break and hit pause on the content that they’re watching.
Peacock has already been offering full-screen Pause Ads and per Levin has run “thousands” of the formats in the streamer’s five-year history.
What Levin said makes this format remarkable is that it’s a win-win for viewers and for marketers, and represents a chance for brands to reach consumers at a time when they’re naturally choosing to pause content.
“It is clever, it is cute. It brings context and content into the experience at once,” Levin commented.
NBCU shared examples of some earlier Pause Ad deployments that also align with Peacock content, like a “Find your mate, scan to shop now" contextual interactive Pause Ad by Nestle for its coffee creamer brand that aligned with the Love Island the series viewers were watching and included a scannable QR code. Or in a cheeky example, a full-screen Pause Ad that showed the message “We know why you paused” by Trojan.
“So we have you covered from coffee to condoms,” Levin teased.
What’s more, Pause Ads, which are created in-house at NBCU, have already shown results in direct-sold campaigns at the company, driving a 68% lift in ad memorability. Campaigns with Pause Ads have also driven a more than 106% lift in foot traffic for Peacock advertisers.
And now, with Wednesday’s announcement, NBCU is the latest to expand access to the format by making it available programmatically as it looks to deliver more scale, flexibility and automation. Advertisers can buy the Pause Ad format on Peacock not only in direct IO (insertion order) deals but via programmatic guaranteed deals starting in 2026.
Virtual MVPD Fubo earlier this year was the first to make Pause Ads available programmatically, and others have also followed suit. Vendor TripleLift recently expanded programmatic access to Pause Ads across more streaming partners including Xumo and Plex. That follows earlier work on Pause Ads with DirecTV, which has also touted results for the format and expects programmatic availability to further boost advertiser uptake.
Additional work on Pause Ads is being done by IAB Tech Lab to standardize the format. The industry technical body this month released and opened a comment period on standardized definitions for six emerging and popular CTV ad formats – including Pause Ads – as well as updated CTV buying guidance. The standardization effort aims to help bring more consistency to the popular CTV format for buyers and sellers across different platforms so that they can streamline how its transacted and do so at scale, including for more uniformity and ease to support programmatic buying.
On the measurement front, NBCU on Wednesday also unveiled a proprietary intelligence platform it dubs the Performance Insights Hub, which delivers data and insights on brand campaigns and audience across both linear and digital streaming. The platform is meant to provide advertisers of all sizes with a unified view of campaign delivery, audience insights and full-funnel in-flight performance to help improve metrics across awareness, engagement and conversion earlier than typical post-campaign reporting historically allows for.
PIH, which features dashboards on the aforementioned campaign aspects, integrates first-and third-party data with automated workflows and partners including Dynata, EDO, Kochava, LiveRamp, MarketCast and VideoAmp. Upcoming integrations will support turnkey outcome measurements for metrics like foot traffic and purchase data, as well as category-specific integrations for CPG and Pharma categories, among others.
For more on Pause Ads and new interactive CTV ad formats (including at NBCU) stay tuned for StreamTV Insider’s upcoming special report on the rise of interactive CTV ads.