NBCUniversal’s Alison Levin on Driving Measurable Commerce Outcomes Through Streaming

Summary

BRAVE COMMERCE: NBCUniversal’s Alison Levin on Driving Measurable Commerce Outcomes Through Streaming

Release Date: May 13, 2025

In this insightful episode of Brave Commerce, hosts Rachel Tippograph, Founder & CEO of MikMak, and Sarah Hofstadter, President of Profitero, delve deep into the evolving landscape of eCommerce and Connected TV (CTV) advertising with their distinguished guest, Alison Levin, President of Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal. Alison brings over a decade of pioneering experience in CTV advertising, making her perspectives invaluable for brands navigating the intricate world of streaming commerce.

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1. The Evolution of Connected TV Advertising

Alison Levin shares her extensive journey in the CTV advertising arena, highlighting the significant strides the industry has made over the past ten years. Starting her career at Yumi, one of the first video ad networks, Alison was at the forefront of selling home screen units on smart TVs like Samsung and LG back in 2011.

“We were really one of the first. And at the time, like iFood TV, it was such a nascent space, like no one knew what connected TV really was,” Alison reflects (07:54).

Her transition to Roku in 2015 marked a pivotal moment, where she played a crucial role in establishing Roku’s advertising business. Alison recalls the excitement and challenges of proving Roku as a formidable platform against industry giants like Google and YouTube.

“We made it. Like all of a sudden Roku is a platform that people are paying attention to and caring about,” she notes (08:38).

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2. Overcoming Early Objections and Proving the Value of Streaming

Sarah Hofstadter probes into the initial skepticism surrounding CTV advertising. Alison acknowledges the early resistance from industry leaders who doubted the longevity and impact of streaming as a viable advertising platform.

“I had a CMO who didn't believe that streaming would be a thing ever, and that it was for, you know, a couple of people and it would always be sort of the small minority,” Alison shares (12:18).

Through persistent demonstration of streaming’s effectiveness in driving brand awareness and sales, Alison and her teams successfully overturned these misconceptions, establishing streaming as a cornerstone of modern advertising strategies.

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3. Integrating Commerce into Streaming Ecosystems

A significant portion of the discussion centers on how NBCUniversal integrates commerce seamlessly into its streaming platforms. Alison outlines three primary avenues through which NBCU employs commerce:

1. In-Content Commerce: Utilizing segments like “Jill Steals and Deals” on the Today Show, where products are promoted directly within the content. Alison emphasizes the success of such initiatives, citing sales figures exceeding a million dollars per product segment (18:00).

2. Aligning Commerce with Content: Campaigns like the recent collaboration with Wayfair demonstrate how NBCU leverages its IP to create shoppable moments tied to specific content themes, such as cooking shows.

3. Shoppable Moments During Major Events: During high-engagement events like the Olympics, NBCU creates targeted campaigns (e.g., Instacart’s Talenti ice cream delivery) that resonate with the viewing experience, driving significant product purchases (19:14).

“We have proven that this model has QR codes and you buy it off that like the model of a time bound savings and deal when it's tied within content that has reach really works,” Alison explains (18:05).

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4. Leveraging Partnerships for Enhanced Attribution and Measurement

Alison highlights the importance of strategic partnerships with retail giants like Instacart and Walmart Connect. These collaborations enable NBCU to harness comprehensive data feedback loops, enhancing attribution accuracy and optimizing campaign performance in real-time.

“The power of what we're seeing and then taking it a step further, like what are the optimizations that we think that we should be doing to actually drive better results over time,” Alison states (20:10).

By integrating data from these partnerships, NBCU can provide advertisers with actionable insights, driving incremental sales and ensuring campaigns are both effective and accountable.

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5. Engaging Stakeholders Across the Organization

A critical aspect of NBCU’s success in streaming commerce is the holistic engagement of various stakeholders within client organizations. Alison discusses how NBCU collaborates not just with CMOs but also with measurement and attribution teams, as well as tech partnership leads.

“Our conversations are CMO level creative because of how much we do in these big moments. Like brands tell their stories within our stories and our stories are massive,” Alison remarks (25:52).

This comprehensive approach ensures that advertising strategies are aligned with broader business objectives, fostering deeper partnerships and driving sustained growth.

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6. Enhancing User Experience in Shopping and Streaming

Addressing challenges in the user experience, Alison acknowledges that while significant progress has been made, there is still work to be done to eliminate friction in the shopping process within streaming environments. She outlines two key focus areas:

1. Deeper Cart Integrations: Streamlining the add-to-cart process to make it more intuitive and less intrusive for viewers.

2. Second Screen Experiences: Developing cohesive shoppable experiences that bridge viewing on the big screen with interactions on mobile devices and other digital platforms.

“There's less like you got to go all the way through in that moment versus like adding to cart as we go,” she explains (26:26).

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7. Personal Reflections: The Bravest Moment in Her Career

Concluding the episode, Alison shares a personal story about the bravest thing she has ever done in her career: applying for a high-stakes job at NBCUniversal despite self-doubt.

“It gave me that reflection moment I think that I needed, even though it deeply scared me during the process and I knew that it would ultimately likely result in me failing,” Alison confesses (28:13).

This experience, though challenging, ultimately empowered her to embrace opportunities beyond her comfort zone, leading to her current influential role at NBCU.

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Conclusion

Alison Levin’s expertise and experiences offer a compelling narrative of how Connected TV advertising has matured and integrated commerce to drive measurable outcomes. Her insights underscore the importance of strategic partnerships, data-driven attribution, and seamless user experiences in the evolving eCommerce landscape. For brands looking to harness the full potential of streaming platforms, Alison’s perspectives provide a roadmap for navigating and excelling in this dynamic environment.

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Notable Quotes:

• “We were really one of the first. And at the time, like iFood TV, it was such a nascent space, like no one knew what connected TV really was,” — Alison Levin (07:54)

• “I had a CMO who didn't believe that streaming would be a thing ever, and that it was for, you know, a couple of people and it would always be sort of the small minority,” — Alison Levin (12:18)

• “We have proven that this model has QR codes and you buy it off that like the model of a time bound savings and deal when it's tied within content that has reach really works,” — Alison Levin (18:05)

• “The power of what we're seeing and then taking it a step further, like what are the optimizations that we think that we should be doing to actually drive better results over time,” — Alison Levin (20:10)

• “Our conversations are CMO level creative because of how much we do in these big moments. Like brands tell their stories within our stories and our stories are massive,” — Alison Levin (25:52)

• “It gave me that reflection moment I think that I needed, even though it deeply scared me during the process and I knew that it would ultimately likely result in me failing,” — Alison Levin (28:13)

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For those eager to delve deeper into the intersection of CTV and commerce, check out our additional episodes featuring Rich, GM of Walmart Connect, and Chris Rogers, Chief Business Officer of Instacart.

Transcript

[Marc Maron]

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[Allison Levin]

Acast powers the world's best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend.

[Marc Maron]

Hey folks, it's Marc Maron from WTF. It's been more than 15 years now and I'm still talking to all kinds of people in my garage every week. Sometimes it's Bill Burr, sometimes it's Ariana Grande. She just looks at me because she's always going like dad, it's not that big a deal. Yeah, I go, sorry, I lost my temper. I go, I still love you. You know, Daddy has issues.

[Allison Levin]

Are you afraid of it? Of death?

[Marc Maron]

Of death?

[Allison Levin]

Well, I don't know.

[Marc Maron]

I think about it all the time.

[Allison Levin]

How are we here already?

[Marc Maron]

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[Rachel Tippograph]

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Their podcasts everywh acast.com.

[Rachel Tippograph]

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[Allison Levin]

The model of a time bound savings and deal when it's tied within content that has reach really works. And we've proven that model. And again, I think it's maybe not as sexy as some of the newer products people talk about, but it works. It drives products off the shelf upwards of a million dollars. And I don't think people are talking about that maybe as much as they should. I think now what we're spending a lot of time talking about is the attribution and impact of different types of content. Not all streaming is created equal is actually, I think, a different conversation that's occurred in the last year or two.

[Unknown]

Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

I'm Rachel Tippograph, the founder and CEO of Micmac.

[Unknown]

I'm Sarah Hofstadter, president of Profitero, and.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

This is a show that talks about what's relevant in E commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, have you cut the cord?

[Unknown]

No, Seriously? No, I have not cut the cord. I still have a cable operator.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Why?

[Unknown]

I. I'm very good at negotiating my bundles and. I know, I know you're surprised. I didn't expect you to ask me this question. I didn't expect to be so vulnerable about the intro, but I have Roku's in different rooms, but I still have my bios. Yeah.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Wow. So when you watch the Olympics, you just watched it live on NBC Linear tv.

[Unknown]

I mean, I have a smart tv, so like sometimes I'll watch it on Peacock. It's just. I have options.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Wow. Okay.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So obviously, Ms. Millennial, I'm assuming you fully cut.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Well, I never had any court to cut because when I was in college, I. I didn't pay for cable. I just illegally watched it on the Internet somehow or got my parents login to different systems and. Yeah, never signed up for cable.

[Unknown]

That's it. Netflix is coming after you, baby. Or do you have your Netflix account now?

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Now I pay for everything, even though I don't want to. But my wife says that makes me a good corporate citizen.

[Unknown]

That's good. If not, they will find you at some point. One of the reasons why I didn't cut the cord initially, when, like it was more of a thing to do, was I found streaming commercials to be really bad at reach frequency. Like, I would be watching the same thing over and over and over again. And I watch the same thing over and over again. I would get the same commercials over and over again. And the lack of frequency capping, the way my kids would say it a few years ago, before they got into the business, the way my kids would say it'd be like, oh my God, does nobody want to advertise on insert show name here. And it's like, no, that's just some really bad targeting or low inventory or whatever. And today it's just obviously totally different.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

I love the dinner table conversation at your house. The frequency gapping on that commercial was horrible.

[Unknown]

Oh, the conversations at the dinner table. Now when you've got a strategist and a media planner at the table. Yeah, my English teacher husband is bored out of his goddamn skull. But. But yes, CTV has come a long way.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Yeah. I mean, but you and I have talked about this like you grew up in search. I grew up in social. During the last 10 years, there was another huge tsunami within advertising, which has been the shift from linear to ctv and now the technology that exists around that ecosystem.

[Unknown]

And I think the integration just given we are a commerce podcast, the integration of commerce into all of that. I think one of the hindrances of mass tv, non addressable, has been who am I reaching and how do I get feedback from them and how do I do anything as a result of it. The lack of interactivity was a real hindrance. And NBC Universal has been for I could go back a decade of them experimenting with shoppable tv, really connecting the dots between. Between the big screen experience and the second screen experience. And some changes that they've made in leadership over the past couple of years has accelerated that significantly 100%.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Well, I'm super excited for everyone to hear from Allison Levin. Small fun fact. Allison and I grew up in the same hometown and we're in high school at the same time, but just different grades. And here she is now president of NBC Advertising. I'm so proud of her. And she really has been at the forefront of CTV advertising over the last decade. So who better to learn from than a person that has spent the last 10 years doing this and now is at the helm of NBC Universal. We're very excited because we don't have a classic brand on the show, though it's a brand in itself. We have Allison Levin, the president of advertising and partnerships at NBC Universal. Hello, Allison.

[Allison Levin]

Hi. Thanks for having me.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

We're so excited to have you. I have to tell you, I'm trying to go through the archives in my head, and you might be either the first or at least the second publisher that we've ever had on this show. And I think it's probably a sign of the times that you guys are getting into the commerce business.

[Allison Levin]

That's awesome. Well, I'm honored to be one of the first or second big fan of the podcast. So I appreciate being here.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Great. Well, it's pretty remarkable what you've achieved, especially in the last 10 years. And when I think of you, I honestly want to call you the founding mother of CTV Advertising. And, you know, you spent nine years at Roku, and then about a year and a half ago you joined NBC. I think probably the reason why they hired you was to accelerate their growth in CTV digital commerce. And CTV advertising is supposed to be a $46 billion industry next year. So as the historian of CTV advertising, like, tell us what's happened over the last 10 years.

[Allison Levin]

Oh, my God. The founding mother makes me Feel like I'm a thousand million billion years old. That is funny. I would say more maybe part of the group of the CTV founding council. Pretty impressive group of people. So even going back before Roku, I was at Yumi, which I'm not sure you guys have heard of before. Remember it's part of Tremor now and I think it's called something different. But it was like one of the first sort of video ad Networks. And in 2011 we actually started selling home screen units on Samsung and LG smart TVs. So we were really one of the first. And at the time like I mean there was iFood TV. It was such a nascent space, like no one knew what connected TV really was. Yumi was smart that they got sort of access to that inventory early on. And then we would run Vizou studies. I don't know if you guys remember Vizu studies, sort of like one question brand study that you would have. And so we would basically track, you know, mobile, online, video and then connected TV and kind of kept seeing sort of connected TV advertising come back as driving more brand awareness than you know, desktop and mobile. And you know, just thinking, thinking through that like GLADWell, you know, 10,000 hours of experience theory, like the people sort of who are at Yumi than selling connected TV advertising at that point now are basically leading a bunch of the connected TV platforms. So you have Sarah Monaghan who's over at Roku, and I went to Roku, which I can talk about in a second. You've got Mike o' Donnell, Adam Bergman and Glenn Pape who are over leading Vizio, Michael Hudes is leading lg. So it was really interesting, you know, everyone who sort of started there and got access and experience and it kind of went and and led other connected TV platforms. And then in 2015 Roku had reached out starting their own ad business. And at the time they weren't public. I think we had like 10 million active accounts. And you know, I went over there, they're about to launch Nielsen dar, which obviously was the first sort of age and gender measurement for the platform build the TV operating system. And so again I went over there to be the first ad sales hire which was such an incredible experience basically not just proving the power of Roku as a platform, but streaming overall. Right. Like and how many channels and what the distribution points and how it changed, how data and attribution evolved over that time. And you know, for us like everyone was a case study one. So it's just not only proving to them that Roku is a platform and a growing platform, but how to use it with the ad experience looks like. So we would basically fly around the country plugging in Roku devices and showing people what the experience actually looked like. And so I remember like a couple years in, someone had sent us a slide from Google, YouTube and they were like, look at this, they're trying to sell against you. And we were like, holy shit, they're trying to sell against us. Like we made it. Like all of a sudden Roku is a platform that people are paying attention to and caring about. So it was an incredible journey. Automation and Programmatics started while I was there. We acquired a couple companies, went from zero to multi billion dollar. Then about a year and a half ago, I went over to NBC, which was really just like the perfect combination of incredible assets, but still so much building ahead as well on new products and automation. So it's been an incredible year and a half. And I think now I'd say Connected TV is like in its young adult era. It's definitely established, it's definitely mature. Every major company has a streaming platform. The content's better than it's ever been. We've got live sports on streaming, which is new in the last year or two. And I think where we're at as an industry is we spent a lot of time sort of talking about reach and audience and maybe not as enough time talking about the environments themselves. The fact that not all streaming is created equal and what sort of different streaming platforms offer and the impact that has on attribution and measurement.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Would you say the objections that you saw 10 years ago are the same objections you see from advertisers today?

[Allison Levin]

No, I think then people didn't think that. I mean, I literally remember this. I had a CMO who didn't believe that streaming would be a thing ever, and that it was for, you know, a couple of people and it would always be sort of the small minority. So like, I think we had to prove back then that this was a platform that was going to continue to grow and that it drove results and that people saw it and that actually, because it was really interesting at the time, and this is not really the case anymore, but Apple TV was so heavily used in the coast, but not as used across the country. And so for the ad industry, everyone just assumed like Apple TV was actually the number one distribution endpoint, which we knew not to be the case. Right. So we just had to prove like the value of streaming, period, which is really different than now. I think now what we're spending a lot of time talking about is the attribution and impact of different types of content, right? Like what is live sports do vs fast vs VOD? What are AD innovations do to drive results? And the fact that like, not all streaming is created equal is actually, I think, a different conversation that's occurred in the last year or two. OmniSend automates all the busy work for you. It can capture customers who abandon their shopping carts, recommend other products based on their purchases, wish them a happy birthday with a personalized offer.

[Rachel Tippograph]

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[Allison Levin]

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[Rachel Tippograph]

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[Sarah Hofstadter]

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[Marc Maron]

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[Unknown]

Talk about being a million billion years old. I used to work with NBC Universal, I guess from 2006 to 2018 as one of their agency partners. And one of the things that we had worked on was this shoppable TV concept with Top Chef, all this extra stuff that you got with shopable tv. So I do feel like even though you're a year and a half into the role, the mindset at NBCUniversal, at least with some of the networks, really what was very commerce oriented and so commerce at NBC goes well beyond CTV and advertising. So how do you guys think about your position within that commerce ecosystem?

[Allison Levin]

Great question. And I think like over the last 10 years I've probably heard the Jennifer Aniston sweater, you know, like remember people Talked about that like a thousand times for us. To your point. Like, it might not be as sexy as what people have been talking about in the last year or two, but commerce has been ingrained in what we've been doing as a platform for a really long time. There's three different sort of flavors of it or ways it comes to life for us at nbcu. The first, where it's like in the content itself. And I think the perfect example of that and the success around it is Jill Steals and deals with which you guys might know about has been around for 15 years on the Today show. That's where basically, you know, it's a segment where there's certain deals that, you know, you can get different price points, obviously, you know, incredible savings. And for that we see upwards of over a million dollars per product in a given segment, right? So like, we've proved that this model has QR codes and you buy it off that like the model of a time bound savings and deal when it's tied within content that has reach really works. And we've proven that model. And again, I think it's maybe not as sexy as some of the newer products people talk about, but it works. It drives products off the shelf upwards of a million dollars. And I don't think people are talking about that maybe as much as they should. So that's been a really successful, proven track record for us. The second, to your point is aligning sort of endemically with content. Right. For us, our right to win is really the IP that we have and the reach that we drive that makes that emotional connection to a viewer and makes them buy a product, whether it's that moment or after the fact. And so an example of that, to your point, is sort of the Top Chef example. I mean, we just had a campaign that launched a couple weeks ago with Wayfair, which had chefs that were in previous seasons and the products that they were using in the show. And we created this moment right after the show with a QR code. And you find that right viewer there because they are interested in cooking shows, right? And so they're more interested in sort of that product. And then I did the last example is where we sort of leverage our IP to create shoppable moments that aren't maybe as endemic to the content itself. Take the Olympics. Like what would be shoppable in the Olympics? Well, it'd be very specific, like a Nike shoe, right? Which I think eventually over time will happen. But we essentially use those moments, those large reach and emotional moments to Create shopability and to move consumers sort of down the purchase funnel. So for that, you know, a good example is during a weekend where there was going to be a lot of the athletes going for gold, we had a campaign with Instacart that was running during the commercial time that was essentially like, don't leave your couch. You don't want to miss these moments. Go buy your Talenti ice cream and have it delivered to you during this gold zone. So we can eat ice cream while we watch these athletes running on the races.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

The American dream.

[Allison Levin]

American dream. Like, what else would you want to be doing? And we saw the results were incredibly strong for that. So for 10 Talenti, there was a 60% increase in purchasing of Talenti versus the same point last year. So again, it's like this creative that actually breaks through to a viewer and sort of winks at what they're doing in that time and drives an interesting need. Really, really drives results for them.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

So you mentioned Instacart. I believe you also have a similar partnership with Walmart Connect, where a brand advertiser, like a Unilever can buy on NBC or peacock against Instacart or Walmart audiences. There's a lot of those offerings right now in the marketplace. And the hot word is, does it drive incrementality in your seat? What are you seeing with these off site retail media campaigns that are happening within the NBC environment?

[Allison Levin]

Yeah, I mean, for us, and I think you're hitting on this, there's been a lot of conversation around leveraging these partnerships from a targeting aspect. We see the power in that for sure. And it's a really important part. Taking that data segment and finding the right viewer at the right moment, which has been a phrase that's been used to death over the last 10 plus years. And we're seeing that work well, especially if you sort of compare it to demo buys. Right. Like an age and gender buy. Of course, like it's a more qualified audience when you're leveraging data like that. But for us, I think what's we're really, really bullish on and what we think will sort of supercharge our portfolio and platform is the data feedback loop that we get with an Instacart and a Walmart Connect and a Coachaba and these other partnerships. The reason being that we all know and clients see it in their mmm, that TV moves products off the shelf. But we've sort of been handicapped on how quickly we get that data back and how quickly we can share it with our advertisers Right. Like, what is the power of what we're seeing? And then taking it a step further, like what are the optimizations that we think that we should be doing to actually drive better results over time? Right. And that's been an area that the social networks have been really, really strong at. And it's been sort of a catch up game for us. And so we've been really focused on these partnerships improving incrementality, but not just for streaming, which I think is sort of becoming table stakes. Right. Like you can get that some of these partnerships through Programmatic and a lot of other partners have been doing it for streaming, but we've been focused on it for the full portfolio because the reality is broadcast and cable, they still drive a lot of reach in the living room. And yes, aggregating reach quickly is harder now than maybe it was 15 years ago. But the most powerful way to do it at scale is on a television screen, leveraging the full portfolio. And so we want to make sure that our measurement attribution follows that for us. And so with Instacart, we launched on streaming, we saw incredible results. We just talked about the talent results. We saw it over and over. We saw it for Jeff, we saw it for Miller. Like there's a bunch of results that had the same sort of that environment and leveraging that data drove results. Great. But now we're in betas to do it for the full platform, the full portfolio. So whenever someone's watching across all NBCU content, getting access to that data and attribution, and we did it with Walmart for the Thanksgiving game and saw incredibly strong results because again, like, you need that reach and all of that engagement to really show the incrementality that you can get from the platform.

[Unknown]

We're in a world right now where every penny is being scrutinized. Not to say that it wasn't happening in the past, but things are pretty volatile right now. And where marketers are spending their next dollar is a big consideration. As you think about where your areas of opportunity are, it sounds like the marriage of advertising and commerce and connecting the dots and making you accountable for it almost like has to be there. Like those are table stakes. But as you think about who your stakeholders are from a decisioning perspective, how do you bring the whole organization into that, not just the CMOs. Is that something that like you guys are thinking about as you think about these cross platform, but also like through a sales and marketing perspective, like how do you think about who's in the room when you're negotiating these kinds of.

[Allison Levin]

Relationships for us, the stakeholders are measurement attribution teams at agencies, at clients. Right. I think actually more than ever before too, we are deep with the tech partnership leads at clients as well. Like, you know, one of the things that was really exciting for me about coming to NBCU was leveraging the full Comcast portfolio. Like Amazon and Google, they don't think about themselves as separate organizations between their ad tech and their media and all the different components and their data. So if you take a step back and you think about Comcast as an organization, well, we have the powerhouse that's NBCU with all of our incredible content. We have literally Super Bowl, World Cup, NBA coming back, Sunday Night Football, Bravo Con. The content is only getting stronger and more and more meaningful. And then at the same time, you have Comcast for Freewheel and their acquisition of Beeswax years ago. Right. Like we have all of these assets together. And so supercharging that conversation and bringing us together in a way we haven't before has been a huge priority. And so for us, again, it's sort of given us a seat at the table as nbcu, I think in places that maybe we had it before on the tech side as well. So again, like our conversations are CMO level creative because of how much we do in these big moments. Like brands tell their stories within our stories and our stories are massive. So like you have the attention of the chief creative officer in a way that others don't. So yeah, there are a lot of stakeholders and for us we've been amazing in our histories around incredible storytelling. Like I think there's no question on that. Like look at what the Olympics did. It was entertainment platform. Right. And where we sort of have been building the table stakes features over the last well before my time. Right. And I'm just here to help accelerate where I can but is around attribution and measurement and ad tech capabilities for real time optimization. And so again, that just basically doubles our stakeholders that we have within these companies that we work with.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

You talk to them a lot about attribution and investing in the tech stack. And one of the things that we didn't touch upon before we get to our famous last question that I want to make sure we share, your perspective is on the user experience side. Unlike the digital and social platforms that are natively sitting within the palm of your hand, where you're also doing shopping, there is, you know, some would say a clunky user experience. Not just this isn't an NBC peacock Thing. This is a universal thing between commerce and viewing. Where do you think that's all going to end up?

[Allison Levin]

Yeah, we spent a lot of time talking about this. I think there's been, to your point, a lot of progress, but still a ways to go to remove all the friction in the process as it exists. And we spent a lot of time talking and thinking about this at Roku too, as a platform. On the platform side, to me, I think there's two things that we've been thinking about, I think as an industry that will accelerate. This one is just sort of cart integrations, deeper cart integrations. So there's less like you got to go all the way through in that moment versus like adding to cart as we go. And who are the partners that we work with on that side? Like, for us, what's been sort of a superpower for us is our partnership side. And while Comcast is a part of our organization, we also work deeply with other tech partners, retail partners. Like, we're not sort of in a walled garden situation. So, like, what are the partnerships to amplify the cart, whether it's NBCU's own cart or other partners and other carts. And then the second is just going to be around second screen, which is really obvious. But, like, we're spending a lot of time on the peacock side talking about mobile and what is sort of the ad formats that we should be thinking about with mobile that might be different and knowing, thinking about sports, that you're using two things at once, right? Like how do we have them talk to each other in a way, or how do we create sort of shoppable experiences, maybe mobile first and amplify it through all of our endpoints, which we have 300 digital endpoints, right? So YouTube and TikTok and all these other places. So I think those are probably the two areas that we've been super, super focused on. And again, that's not just us. I think that's your point industry wide.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Well, we could pick your brain about CTV forever, but we got to ask you our famous last question, which is, what's the bravest thing you've ever done?

[Allison Levin]

I have to say you've had some pretty brave people on your podcast before. And I'm like, oh, man, some of the people's answers, pretty, pretty remarkable. It's a hard question. It's a good, like, reflection question. I have to say, over my nine years at Roku, there were so many. It just grew so quickly while I was there. And so when I had a boss who I was really fortunate that sort of believed in me before I thought I. There were things that I could do myself. And so there was all these like little micro moments of things that, you know, honestly, like every week scared the shit out of me that I would have to do. And over time it's like it just kept getting amplified. So it was like presenting to, you know, a tough product and engineering team that I had never done before as a sales lead, to presenting to the entire organization, to being in front of the board, to new friends. Right. There's all these moments that I'm like, this is outside my, my comfort zone. And I'd say probably though the most was actually going for a really big job there that I knew that I very likely not going to get. And it was high stakes and it required meeting really, really senior people. A good friend of mine was like, you got to go for it. You deserve to go for it. And I was nervous about it because I didn't feel like I deserved it. And fast forward, I didn't get it. But the process actually really helped me to reflect on sort of what I had accomplished at the organization alongside such an incredible team and honestly gave me the confidence to get outside my comfort zone. When NBCU came calling about this job that I, you know, I felt like I could do it and it was a good time and it was such an incredible opportunity. But I sort of, it gave me that reflection moment I think that I needed, even though it deeply scared me during the process and I knew that it would ultimately likely result in me failing. So I'd say that was probably the most, the bravest part of my career journey.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

Well, Alison, I don't think anyone thinks that you're failing. Thank you so much for sharing your story story with us. It seems like NBC has some big things up its sleeve for the upcoming year.

[Allison Levin]

You do. Thank you guys. It's great to chat.

[Sarah Hofstadter]

If you like what you heard and you want to keep thinking about CTV and commerce partnerships, you can go and listen to an episode that we recorded with Rich, the GM of Walmart Connect, or go listen to an episode we did with the chief business officer of Instacart, Chris Rogers. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, write a review. Thanks for listening.

[Rachel Tippograph]

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[Allison Levin]

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[Jackie Cooper]

Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast launched on the Adweek Podcast Network. My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice. Meet everyone once. As a result, I've met some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming centre stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth, insights and visions for the future that will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.