Universal Ads must pass the pizza test if it’s to steal ad dollars from social

Last week, Universal Ads released an MCP (Model Context Protocol) extension, following a similar policy change from Meta in April. The move means that small teams of marketers can connect home brewed AI media agents built with Claude or Gemini directly with Universal Ads, allowing them to build tools for campaign optimization or data analysis.

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Earlier this month, it inked a partnership with commerce media firm Koddi that allowed small business advertisers to use retail data to target audiences using Fox, NBCU and Paramount inventory. The week prior, it added linear inventory to the Universal Ads self-service platform, allowing SMB advertisers to run commercials (some made using AI tools) against broadcast TV.

All of this is intended to tempt small businesses, like Camillo’s Italian Restaurant Pizzeria & Bar, to take their paid social, search and direct mail dollars into CTV. The Kutztown, Pa., restaurant was part of a recent test run by Slice.com, a company that provides digital ordering and fulfilment to family-owned pizzerias, using Universal Ads to put pizza ads against coverage of the Winter Olympics.

20 pizzerias including Camillo’s (alongside Jersey Pizza Boys, El Centenario Pizza and the Prima Pizza Kitchen in Staten Island, NY) targeted viewers within their own zip codes, spending around $500 a month each over a three-month period. 

“This is the first time that these businesses ever imagined that they could be on the larger screen in the home,” said Terrance Morash, vp of marketing at Slice. The campaigns delivered more than prestige, though.

Slice and UA compared the sales performance of the pizzerias in the test with similar pizza joints that decided not to run ads. By comparison, the campaigns delivered an average 3.2% incremental sales lift – and crucially, a 16.8% rise in sales after the campaign had ended, suggesting the ads had provided a long-term awareness effect hard to replicate through digital performance channels. After all, it’s all about outcomes these days.

While more smaller and mid-sized brands are biting, Comcast isn’t the only company competing for the industry’s long tail.

Half of Netflix’s ad revenue, for example, now comes via programmatic buys through third-party DSPs, rather than the direct deals favored by large brand advertisers. Amazon’s audience and commerce data, combined with a live sports portfolio it’s opened up to smaller advertisers, make it an attractive option.

“If you’re a small to medium sized business, and you need more bang for your buck, then you might look for the FAST channels of the world; something like Tubi and Pluto where people are watching a lot of content, but the CPMs are a lot cheaper,” said Lauren Anselmo, group director of paid media, Moroch.

Meanwhile, YouTube offers a halfway house for marketers just beginning to branch out from paid social and performance channels into streaming and TV.

Finch, a mental health and wellness app, began running its first ever brand campaign — an animated hero film extolling the virtues of everyday self care — earlier this month after focusing for years on paid social and search inventory.

“Connected TV kind of gives us something that we have never really had before, which is time, attention, and more of a captive audience,” said Katie Shill, vp of marketing at Finch. She told Digiday the company was running ads on Roku and YouTube.

With an annual media budget of $10-20 million, the company is at the high water mark of the mid-sized category. But it’s the kind of firm media owners want to sell ads to.

Shill said Finch had allocated 40% of its campaign budget to CTV and upper-funnel activity, and kept back 60% for the performance oriented channels such as Google and Meta that its team was used to.

“We didn’t want to completely flip it,” she said. “This brand buy is a layer on top of our existing performance budget.”

Buffalo-based full-service agency Crowley Webb, which works with local and regional advertisers like M&T Bank and Sullivan Tire & Auto Service, has been working to usher more smaller brands into CTV. Jessica Carroll, vp of media, said that’s typically meant using Hulu, Peacock, Disney+ and Amazon Prime.

Where clients are spending on both paid social and TV, Carroll said it’s still a 70/30 split in favor of the platforms. That ratio is gradually tilting, however. “The entry into CTV is lower now for clients. The targeting is increasingly getting better as more people shift to watching streaming. It means that [the] scalability [of campaigns] is increasing,” she said. 

Meta, Google and Universal Ads’ streaming peers aren’t the end of that competition. Smaller advertisers also favor mobile app inventory like that offered by Applovin and Unity. 

While the former already boasts a large ad network (its Q1 revenue rose 59% year on year to $1.84 billion), the latter’s leadership is working to expand its own ads business, which contributed to a Q1 revenue of $352 million this year.

Recent Universal Ads measurement features have been aimed at dislodging some of those mobile dollars.  Last week, it finalized a deal with Adjust, AppsFlyer, Branch, Kochava, and Singular to allow brands to run campaigns on its CTV inventory that track mobile app users installing an app after they’ve seen an ad.

In other areas, Comcast has invested in its programmatic capabilities and opened up more sacred-cow inventory like the Olympic Games to programmatic buyers. Alongside streaming companies, it’s moved to build out menus of commerce-oriented ad formats like shoppable and interactive units. It’s also been one of several media firms to develop an AI creative tool intended to reduce production costs as a barrier to entry.

Those features will go some way to making the case for CTV to smaller and mid-sized businesses. The Slice pilot has given Universal Ads a playbook with which to back up that case. Michael Duchin, head of ad partnerships at Universal Ads, said: “That’s the guidance we’re giving: [take] three months to build awareness, drive recall, and build frequency within specific markets.”

For Comcast to create the broad base it’s aiming for, Universal Ads doesn’t just need a critical mass of small advertisers, but for those advertiser to stick with campaigns for weeks and months. Just like the pizza business, consistency is the key, and can lead to more dough.