Today we continue our Voices from the Summit series with Kristina Shepard, EVP, Streaming & Performance Sales and Partnerships at NBCUniversal. At the 2026 Outcome Summit, Kristina joined the conversation on collaboration in CTV and live sports. We caught up with her to go deeper on the themes she raised: what actually makes a streaming environment premium, how smaller brands can compete in high-attention moments, and why streaming is more than digital video on a bigger screen. 

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Hi Kristina, welcome to Voices from the Summit. Tell us about yourself and what you’re working on at NBCUniversal.  

At NBCUniversal, I oversee streaming and performance sales and partnerships, which sits at the intersection of our premium content, advertising, and technology. My team and I focus on helping brands of all sizes connect with audiences across our streaming ecosystem from Peacock and live sports to entertainment, news, and unscripted fandoms, while ensuring those investments drive measurable business impact. 

Right now, a big priority is continuing to evolve streaming into a true performance engine. That means expanding access to premium streaming opportunities for advertisers across categories and growth stages, while building smarter tools, strategic partnerships, and experiences that are additive to the viewer experience and deliver stronger impact across the funnel.

In a market where every platform claims premium, what actually separates a high-quality streaming environment from a cluttered one and why should marketers care? 

A premium environment is not just defined by the content itself, but by the quality of attention, the viewer experience, and the ability to drive real business outcomes. For us at NBCU, we own the IP, the ad experience, and the technology powering it, which allows us to create streaming environments where advertising feels additive to the experience rather than disruptive to it. 

And specifically with Peacock, it was built with both audiences and advertisers in mind from the start, allowing us to create an experience where premium content, thoughtful advertising, and innovation work together seamlessly rather than compete for attention. That distinction matters because marketers today are being held accountable for results, not just impressions more than ever before.

Sports fans, reality TV viewers, late-night audiences — these can be the same person. How do you help brands stop thinking in content silos and start thinking about the whole consumer journey? 

Consumers don’t move through media in silos, and brands shouldn’t either. Audiences fluidly shift between live sports, entertainment, news, and social moments across all screens based on their interests, mindset and purchasing journey. A consumer may discover a brand while watching Sunday Night Football, deepen engagement through Bravo's Summer House, and ultimately take action later through another touchpoint. 

That’s why we work with marketers to think beyond individual content verticals and instead focus on how audiences move across our ecosystem. NBCUniversal’s portfolio allows brands to show up across multiple passions, platforms, and moments in a more connected way. In fact, during the fourth quarter, nearly 80% of NBC Sports viewers went on to watch additional content across NBC and Bravo, reinforcing how interconnected viewing behaviors and opportunities for brands have become.

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How does NBCUniversal think about ad innovation as a differentiator? What are you building or offering that changes the value equation for advertisers beyond reach and scale? 

We think about ad innovation as a way to elevate the overall viewing experience, not sit alongside it. We truly view the advertising experience as the viewing experience, and that’s how we continue to design it. That philosophy comes to life through innovations that extend engagement beyond the content itself, like ‘Your Bravoverse,’ a first-of-its-kind, AI-powered, vertical video experience. Alongside capabilities like AI-enabled contextual targeting in live environments and Live Total Impact, we’re increasingly focused on the role of creative versioning - using AI to dynamically align messaging and formats to the context of what viewers are watching in real time. That allows brands to show up more relevantly in the moment, whether that’s through environment-specific storytelling or tailored creative built for different audience mindsets. Ultimately, we’re connecting brands to the most relevant moments across our ecosystem, extending engagement beyond the content itself. The result is moving beyond impression-based buying into experiences that shape attention in real time, deepen engagement, and drive stronger, more measurable conversion.

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Demand diversification is a priority through expanding digital partnerships across client sizes and categories is a focus for your role. Where is the biggest untapped opportunity right now, and what's holding it back? 

An area of continued opportunity is expanding how more brands and categories access premium streaming environments in a world where social media, streaming, and fan communities have fundamentally changed audience behavior. Fans are no longer just watching shows - they’re creating memes, commentary, watch parties, and real-time conversation that extends the life of content well beyond the screen. Today’s viewer moves seamlessly between platforms: they might watch a live moment on broadcast, catch highlights on social, and continue the experience on streaming. So our focus is on building an ecosystem that follows that behavior, rather than treating platforms as silos. Through programmatic, automation, and strategic partnerships, premium video is becoming more flexible, measurable, and accessible across both streaming and the broader social ecosystem that surrounds it. The challenge now is less about access and more about simplification - reducing friction across fragmented systems while continuing to deliver the quality, transparency, and performance brands expect from NBCUniversal across every touchpoint where audiences are engaging with content.

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CTV and programmatic have opened the door for smaller brands to access inventory that was once only available to major spenders. What's the opportunity there, and what do smaller brands need to focus on out of the gate? 

This shift isn’t just about access, it’s about the ability for smaller advertisers to compete in culturally relevant, high-attention moments that drive business outcomes. The brands that see the most success are the ones that start with clear objectives, strong creative, and a focus on quality environments over sheer volume. In streaming, context and experience matter as much as targeting. When smaller brands align those fundamentals with premium content and use data to stay agile, they can drive performance that rivals much larger players and build lasting brand equity at the same time.

The Outcome Summit centered on moving beyond proxy metrics toward performance truth. From your vantage point, what's the most persistent measurement myth in streaming? 

One of the biggest myths is that more data automatically equals better conversion. In reality, marketers need smarter, more quality actionable data. Smaller, high-quality data sets paired with premium environments often produce stronger insights and better business results than scale alone. The industry has made major progress around attribution, interoperability, and real-time optimization, especially through strategic partnerships and retail media collaborations. For us we’ve seen that firsthand with partnerships with Instacart, Walmart Connect and more. We're also investing in building tools like our Performance Insights Hub to help advertisers move beyond static reporting toward more connected, in-flight measurement tied to actual business outcomes.

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‍If you could reset one assumption the industry holds about streaming, what would it be and how would you correct it?  

I would reset the assumption that streaming is simply digital video on a bigger screen. The reality is that premium streaming combines the emotional impact of television with the precision, flexibility, and measurability of digital.