Vivi Ziegler- President, NBC Universal Digital Entertainment

Vivi Ziegler- Source NBC Media Village

On Thursday, September 25th, the GE Women’s Network sponsored a leadership speaker event here on the Universal lot. Vivi Ziegler, President of NBC Universal Digital Entertainment, came and spoke about her career track and current priorities on the job.

She is focused on 3 areas within NBC:  NBC.com, NBCU Digital Studios, and NBCU Digital Strategy.  Since I’m a huge consumer of all things web related, I found her presentation informational and inspiring.  She spoke about the websites her department supports (SciFi, Bravo, NBC, USA, Oxygen, and Access Hollywood), and the importance of the digital world as a complement to TV.

Our digital solutions, are a direct relationship with consumers, which means big benefits to NBC. Its a two-way experience that consumer behavior demands. Instead of us just pushing content through our distribution channels (TV, etc.), in this day and age, having a digital strategy and solution gives us a two way street in regards to communication. In turn NBC can deliver more value to our advertisers, with more of a breadth and depth exposure. The great part about Ziegler’s job is that she is able to establish that digital strategy. She leverages metrics by looking at click through rates, and the paths users take on say nbc.com to find information on the The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.  Her goal is to put power in the hands of consumers, and to offer features on the web that’s going to attract viewership since digital venues like websites gets paid by advertisers for how many people view it.

Looking at the future growth of NBC.com is strong. It started off with 7 employees, and has grown to nearly 60.  The exponential growth of NBC.com allows for more in-depth fan experiences, coupled with the technical advances such as the Rewind Video Player, which was introduced 2 weeks ago so that visitors to the site can setup viewing parties amongst their friends.

Another growing business is the development of NBC Digital Studio, headed by Cameron Death. This department pairs great content with great brands. For example, The Gemini Division was developed as a result of this business. It creates webisodes, pairing creative with brands. Such partners include AT&T, Visa, Pizza Hut, FedEx, and VW. These webisodes are completely funded by advertising dollars.

Another exciting emerging market is the mobile market. With partnerships with Verizon, the opportunity is there to seize. Ziegler explained there was two types of emerging mobile options, including on deck mobile in which NBC content would be on the main menu bar within the mobile phone. The good thing with this strategy is that Verizon pays us a distribution fee for license, the downfall though is that we can’t sell ads. The other option is free access mobile, where we generate mobile pages for devices like the Blackberry and iPhone like http://www.nbc.com/m. This is a condensed mobile site for ease in viewing on small screens of mobile devices. NBC alone has 43 mobile sites right now, with expansion plans on the way.

Finally, Ziegler addressed the recent acquisition of the Weather Channel. The digital footprint of Weather Channel is huge, there are over 50 million registered unique users, categorized by zip code. The future of geo-targeting is getting even closer with this acquisition!

One last interesting tidbit…the sweet spot of target market for digital is 37 years old, and the sweet spot for TV is 38 years old. This perplexes me, I would have thought the demographic for TV would have been older and the digital demographic younger.