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

A more diverse customer set could give big media companies like Comcast the same resilience to market shocks as Meta and Google enjoy, but persuading enough performance-minded brands to try CTV — and they’ll need a lot of them — takes constant effort.

For Comcast, that effort means stacking up a slew of feature announcements and developing out its SMB-focused Universal Ads business even as its media execs attempt to court big-ticket advertisers during upfront negotiations. 

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.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.