The setting: the bustling NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center, a multi-million-dollar production complete with full-fledged television studio. Around the booth, areas that show off the various NBCU networks, their digital initiatives, HD. The hot handout: a bright red 2 gig SanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK) flash drive that can be plugged into a USB port at one of the numerous kiosks dotting the booth and used to store portable NBCU videos. Seated at one of the cafe tables is Beth Comstock, president of integrated media for NBCU. We’re about to start when a woman from the investment community walks up and asks when she’s going back to GE. I’m not, Comstock tells her. The woman likes the reply; Comstock is a rarity in the male-dominated digital world. Comstock’s used to the question; she has been the subject of rumors and speculation, as well as negative comments (usually anonymous), since Dec. 15, 2005, when she returned to NBCU from parent GE as president, NBCU digital and marketing, reporting to Bob Wright. She’s into her third year now—still in digital but more focused on advertising, development, investing and research—and reporting to Jeff Zucker. We spoke about that, iVillage, Hulu, integration, ad sales and more. Excerpts after the jump.

Presence at CES: “Hopefully it’s telling the story that we’re taking digital very seriously. We have a focus. What are we trying to do with our digital? We’re trying to extend our brands; it’s not enough to be on one platform. We’re trying to get more pure digital efforts. That’s how Hulu developed, that’s what led us to iVillage. We’re partnering and investing in interesting partnerships, whether it’s SanDisk from a distribution perspective or some of the investments we’ve made in Peacock Fund.  In the past couple of years, we’ve focused our efforts, we’ve got a good strategy and we’ve made good on our commitment to be a player in digital. We’ve said we’re going to cross this year the billion dollar mark for our digital activities across the company in revenue. That’s an important milestone for us; we initially said it would be ‘09.”

Making money: Like her boss, with the writers’ strike highlighting digital economics, Comstock has to walk a fine line when touting digital’s success: “I’d love to tell you that every one of our digital efforts makes money but that’s not true. It’s like a portfolio. We have some areas where we have a clean line of profitability and some that were growth-funded but we’re still not sure. We’re monitoring and you have to be able to do both, especially in digital, because the business models are still so formative from a media-company perspective. You can’t compare some of the digital activities to cable; cable’s like 30 years old. It’s a well-established business model. It’s very attractive. You can’t compare some of the things happening in the digital landscape to that and make decisions right away that digital isn’t going to succeed.”

EST, VOD, etc.: How important are digital revenues from sales or rentals to digital’s future or how marginal? “My crystal ball’s a bit fuzzy. I don’t have those answers. I don’t think anyone has those answers. Right now, everyone’s talking about advertising as the predominant model. That’s what we see. But I personally don’t think advertising is going to be the only model going forward. We’re betting on the fact that there will be multiple business models that emerge. For the sake of digital’s healthiness, they have to. ... The fact that we can generate advertising revenue from digital was a big line to cross and we feel incredibly confident about that. It’s all about scale and depth and quality.”
On Hulu: Comstock and others spent a lot of time at CES last year pitching the JV video distribution concept to possible equity and syndication partners. How does she like where Hulu is now? “(CEO) Jason Kilar brought a lot of clarity to it. That was a big deal. … I think we feel good where we are this time, getting ready to launch the consumer launch. Jason hasn’t announced a launch date yet but he’s said some time this quarter.”

Digital ad sales: No details but Comstock says digital and cross-platform sales have increased. She credits Peter Naylor, who came over with iVillage and now runs digital ad sales. “Peter has been doing a really great job of extending that TV experience for advertisers and then also just targeting digital advertisers. We’ve invested a lot in backroom capabilities for targeting. I feel really good about that. ... Most of our discussions have some cross-platform. Most marketers want a mix. They want TV plus other platforms.”

iVillage: Comstock has taken a lot of heat for the $600 million acquisition of iVillage, which critics say isn’t producing the results to justify the price and the hype. “I don’t really know why. I don’t know. We bought a property that was 12 years old. It’s still the leading site for women. We’ve grown traffic for 16 months year over year (make that 17); we’ve grown advertising by 30 percent, outpaced the industry - so by our benchmark it was incredibly successful.” She attributes some of it to the failed TV experiment with the local O&O stations. “I think that allowed people to say, ‘Hey, maybe the integration wasn’t what they thought.’ Meanwhile, I’m looking at the way we’re integrating today at iVillage and I’m really happy with where that’s going. ... You know this space. People expect instant overnight sensations. iVillage has always been a steady-as-she-goes property‘. It’s allowed us to now create a virtual women’s network. We bought Oxygen, connect that with iVillage, connect that with parts of Bravo and Today, start from a sales marketing perspective to go after specific targets of women and help advertisers reach them. This is a long-term play.”

Is this real?: Comstock’s corporate team, which includes chief digital officer George Kliavkoff, mixing incubation and development that goes back to the networks or divisions with operation of cross-company efforts like the women’s ad network or efforts that wouldn’t have a natural home. “A lot of it’s to support the extended brands so Oxygen.com supports the Oxygen entertainment properties but you will find over time there are places where we’re going to connect Oxygen and iVillage. It’s not all of Oxygen has to come into iVillage, but pieces, just like we’ve done with Today.