NBCU’s Jeff Shell Says Ad Market May Have “Bottomed Out”

With advertising trends front and center for Wall Street and industry players in the current crop of media earnings, Comcast’s NBC Universal was one of the first to weigh in.

NBCU CEO Jeff Shell said the market steadily worsened over the course of last year but “it kind of feels like it bottomed out around late November, early December, and really since then it hasn’t gotten worse, and maybe even a little better.”

He said he’d describe it as a “shallow” market with areas “that are better, actually really doing well, like pharma, entertainment, travel is on fire” and other that “feel uncertain” like weak tech, auto and financial services.

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Speaking on a post-earnings conference call, he said it feels like the weakness is due more to macroeconomic uncertainty than to businesses not doing well. “None of us know where the economy is headed, so advertisers are holding back, and when they do advertise, they are coming in later than usual.

He predicted the market “is going to stay weak for the first half of this year, then recover. But, who really knows?”

He believes NBCU will hold up aa bit better than peers as Peacock’s growth helps offset weakness in linear TV, and the company has made major investments in data and measurement.

In earnings reported this morning, Comcast said NBCU’s media advertising revenue rose 4% due to the FIFA World Cup airing on Telemundo and an increase in Peacock advertising.