NBCUniversal: Shoppable TV Lifts Brand Favorability 171%

By Tom Whitfield

Shoppable TV content attached to shows viewers care about drives a 171% increase in brand favorability, according to NBCUniversal. Evan Moore, svp of commerce partnerships at NBCU Advertising & Partnerships, said the business built around shoppable television is growing "significantly year over year."

The company has spent seven years developing shoppable television across its own platforms, such as Peacock, and third-party platforms, such as LG TVs. Viewers can now buy products from roughly 12 shows, including the traitors' cape from "Traitors" and the monogrammed water bottle from "Love Island USA."

The mechanics vary by format. Sometimes the content appears as an in-ad QR code that viewers scan with their phone. Other times it appears on screen during a scene of a show like "Below Deck," where viewers scroll through products in that scene with their remote.

What do the numbers signal for marketers?

Moore said engagement runs 3X higher for an in-show product integration than for a standard ad. For practitioners, that gap matters more than the favorability lift: it puts a measurable premium on IP-embedded placements over traditional spot buys.

NBCU frames the shift as proof that product placement has matured beyond parody — the concept ran as a running gag in NBC's "30 Rock," but executives say the topic is no joke. The seven-year build across owned and third-party surfaces suggests retailers and brands should treat connected-TV commerce as infrastructure, not experiment.

For marketers weighing shoppable formats, the NBCU data point offers one concrete benchmark: pairing commerce with IP that viewers already follow converts attention into both favorability and engagement at rates conventional ads do not match.