NBCUniversal hires Alison Levin
NOVEMBER 9, 2023 10.24 EUROPE/LONDON BY CHRIS DZIADUL

NBCUniversal has appointed industry leader Alison Levin president of advertising and partnerships. At the same time, under the leadership of newly appointed Advertising and partnerships global chairman Mark Marshall, it has promoted Karen Kovacs to president of client partnerships.

Joining the company next month, Levin will assume oversight of all advertising sales initiatives for NBCUniversal across national, local, SMB Growth, Peacock, sports and Olympic and Paralympic Sales. Levin, who will report directly into Marshall, will also help shape and execute the division’s new audience-focused sales strategy.

In Kovacs’s new role, she will report into Marshall and continue to lead all new and emerging client relationships, while also gaining oversight of the company’s National Offices. In this newly expanded position, Kovacs and her team will work across NBCUniversal to develop 360 partnerships with top CMOs throughout the industry to help drive results for their businesses.

Commenting on the appointments, Marshall said: “Alison is extremely well-respected across the advertising ecosystem for her focus on partnership as well as her innovative leadership in the connected TV and digital ad space.

“As a pioneer of the shift to data-driven selling, Alison brought instrumental value to the marketplace at large, and I have no doubt her acumen and experience will bring incredible value to our team. Karen Kovacs has been essential in the collaboration and growth of our enterprise partnerships with clients, and I could not be more thrilled to have these two talented executives join our broader leadership team in advancing our division forward”.

Before joining NBCUniversal, Levin served as VP of global ad revenue and marketing solutions at Roku where she led the new product and go-to-market strategy for the company’s advertising business, including the TV streaming division. As the first ad sales hire for the company, Levin shaped Roku’s early value proposition with advertisers and built out the ad sales and support teams both in the US and internationally, including marketing, research, analytics, publishing partnerships, strategy and more. Prior to Roku, she was a sales executive with YuMe, managing key accounts for its ad tech business, and has held sales positions with IAC and BusinessWeek.

Prior to this role, Kovacs served as executive VP, client partnerships for NBCUniversal’s Advertising and Partnership’s division where she oversaw several major client efforts, including the development and launch of NBCUniversal’s Family is Universal campaign.