NBCU NEWS GROUP DIGITAL OCTOBER IN REVIEW: RANKS AS #1 NEWS ORGANIZATION, LAUNCHES NEW COMMERCE DESTINATION, BEST LISTENER MONTH ON RECORD FOR PODCASTS

NBCU News Group’s Digital Properties Reached 142 Million Unique Visitors

NBCU News Group Launched New “Select” Commerce Destination

November 15, 2021 – NBCU News Group (NBC News, TODAY, MSNBC and CNBC) brought in 142 million unique visitors in October, ranking as the #1 news organization in the U.S., beating CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post for six out of the last seven months. NBCU News Group was also #1 in total video minutes watched and total video starts in the month of September, with 395 million views and 1.8 billion minutes watched.

CNBC Digital is the #1 non-portal brand in Business News for unique visitors and ranked #1 in Business News video with 15.8 million unique video viewers, holding the top position for nine consecutive months. CNBC’s flagship YouTube account had its best month since May for video starts and minutes viewed. Two videos published in October were among the top 15 most-viewed flagship videos for 2021, each driving more than 2 million views. Plus, CNBC.com’s cryptocurrency content continued to be a hot topic for users in October, with unique visitors to the brand’s crypto coverage up more than 6x year-over-year. 

CNBC PRO continues to break records each month for total subscriptions, and October was CNBC PRO’s best month for new subscribers since March.

MSNBC Daily has soared to its strongest month on record on MSNBC.com, and the Reidout Blog which launched in September nearly doubled its debut month’s page views in October. MSNBC unique visitors are up 17% year-to-date vs. the same months last year, with increased audiences on platforms such as Apple News. MSNBC video time spent per viewer ranks ahead of CNN.com for the seventh month in a row (32 minutes vs. 28 minutes).

TODAY Digital has reached more than 50M unique visitors for eleven of the last twelve months. TODAY also continues to rank among the top 10 entities in the Lifestyle category for video views and minutes and ranks among the top 5 entities for video viewers (September 2021). 

NBCU News Group’s streaming services, TODAY All Day and NBC News NOW, had top months, with NBC News NOW seeing 54 million video views and more than 17 million hours watched, up +115% year-to-date in 2021 over the same time frame in 2020. It was the streaming platform’s best October ever. 

TODAY All Day saw its best month on record in October, up nearly 40% versus the previous record and the prior month. The past two months have been the lifestyle streaming network’s  strongest months to-date after launching last summer.

In addition, TODAY All Day streamed Peacock Presents: Steals & Deals Throwback Edition, a shoppable hour-long special hosted by TODAY Lifestyle and Commerce Contributor Jill Martin, who shared modern takes on throwback favorites and incredible savings on this fall’s trends.

CNBC premiered the digital original documentary, How The AMC Apes Cracked Wall Street, which follows AMC Entertainment’s wild ride back from the brink of bankruptcy.

October was the News Group’s top listener month on record, continuing to rank in the top ten of all podcast publishers in the US, up +23% versus October 2020. It was the News Group’s second best month ever for podcast downloads with more than 54M global podcast downloads, up +13% vs. the prior year. 

TODAY podcasts, in particular, had its second consecutive record month, fueled in part by new programs like “Making Space with Hoda Kotb.” The last couple of months have also been Dateline podcasts’ strongest on record with the show surpassing more than half a billion downloads since its launch. 

CNBC podcasts had their second highest month ever for downloads in October, up 13% vs. the prior year.

October was one of NBCU News Group commerce’s best months on record as audiences gear up for the holiday season. 

The NBCU News Group launched Select, a reimagined commerce destination, giving readers high-quality, expertly-sourced product and service recommendations. Select helps audiences upgrade their lives through smart, shoppable guides and expert advice. Since launching its commerce program in late 2017, NBCU News Group Commerce has seen significant growth, with revenue up more than 110% each year on average. In total, the commerce sites have had an average of nearly 8 million monthly unique visitors this year. Check out the new Select destination at NBCNews.com/Select and CNBC.com/Select.

In October, TODAY All Day streamed its second long-form shoppable special – Steals & Deals: Throwback Edition with Jill Martin. The hour-long shopping special led TODAY All Day to have one of its strongest days on record in total hours watched.

*Sources: Comscore Media Metrix (October 2021) & Comscore Video Metrix (September 2021), U.S. desktop internet population 2+ and mobile internet population 13+ years old, Custom-Defined List, Based on NBCU News entity compared to a custom list of brand competitors that are also in the News/Information Category. Adobe Analytics & Partner Dashboards, Cross-Platform Global Data, October 2021. Podtrac, Total Mobile and Desktop US Audience and Global Downloads, October2021.  

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For more information, contact: 

Emily Passer
NBC News Digital
Emily.Passer@nbcuni.com

Claudia Meyer-Samargia
NBC News Digital
Claudia.MeyerSamargia@nbcuni.com

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