Robert Andrews

The opportunity is massive, but the silos are deep. In the emerging world, there are enough possibilities and platforms that the market is becoming fragmented. Marc Bourget wants to bring it back together. Bourget is product management VP at Samba TV, a tech platform which helps advertisers approach the new world of connected TV. “All […]

It’s the walled gardens’ world; we just live in it. That is the growing fear in pretty much all walks of society these days. None more so than in media, where, on the one hands, publishers lament the attention and time gobbled by social networks, apps and search platforms, and, on the other, advertisers grumble […]

Three years after it set out to create a digital advertising supply chain platform that set out to ease publishers’ worries, trade association Digital Content Next‘s own private marketplace is now facilitating more than “eight figures” in ad sales, according to the man running the non-profit organization. Over the last few years, a growing number […]

If you are in the ad targeting game, it helps to know who your viewers or readers are. Traditionally, TV has suffered from inadequate knowledge about those viewers. The industry has come to call this “probabilistic” targeting. But its flip side, “deterministic” targeting, promises to give advertisers more accuracy by using real viewer data to […]

The advertising these days is fond of talking about the perils of “walled gardens”, the publisher platforms which don’t allow the transport of data beyond their own confines. But Erica Schmidt is more interested in “open parks”. In this video interview with Beet.TV, the global CEO of IPG Mediabrand’s unit Cadreon says “identity graph” technology […]

What if AI could perform many of the functions of modern marketing? That future is coming in to view. Today, technology’s ability to collect and interpret vast quantities of data means marketers are swimming in reports, often leading to insights which can inform recalibrations in strategy. But the emerging possibility of “predictive” technology, underpinned by […]

A few years after the technology began its surge, artificial intelligence continues being talked about in advertising and marketing circles. But, beyond the abstract, understanding for how AI can help real use cases tends to remain spartan. So, what can AI really do for P&L? In this video interview with Beet.TV, Manish Mittal, SVP of […]

“Waste not, want not”. The origin of that aphorism apparently goes back centuries but, in the super-charged TV ad market of 2019, it may be as relevant as ever. Especially for brands. In this video interview with Beet.TV, an ad agency leader says, when he buys ad campaigns across media types, he sees a lot […]

NBCUniversal parent Comcast acquired FreeWheel in 2014, but that affiliation doesn’t appear to have affect FreeWheel’s ability to strike deals with other broadcasters. In a deal announced today, Discovery Inc, which already was a FreeWheel customer, says it will now take on FreeWheel’s “unified decisioning platform to enable holistic advertising management for Discovery’s full roster […]

The outcry over “transparency” in the digital ad ecosystem grew to a crescendo three years ago now, when the ANA’s K2 Transparency Report accused agencies of operating a system of rebates and kickbacks that worked against brand clients by hiding substandard effectiveness. That was just one piece of the problem. Ad-tech vendors also stood accused […]

Despite years of talk of “convergence” in media and technology, there is still confusion about how exactly it should play out on the ground, according to an executive trying to help advertisers better understand the market. “There’s also a lot of confusion around it because oftentimes people think, ‘Oh, connected TV, that’s ‘convergence’,” says Philip […]

In a world of Slack, social and video, it may be much maligned. But email, which dates back to at least 1973, could wind up being the unlikely glue of advanced digital marketing stacks. Email marketing is nothing new, of course – brands have practiced it for decades. But, somewhere along the line, marketers trying […]

SANTA BARBARA —  The non-profit umbrella representing advertising-funded digital media will bolster its defense to lawmakers it says don’t understand the data-driven ad targeting technology they are legislating against. But the IAB also says it has its own ideas for limiting the mis-use of audience data. In the last couple of years, privacy scandals like […]

SANTA BARBARA — The marketing industry has been thrown in to turmoil by a collection of digital privacy scandals and regulatory responses that have changed the nature of ad targeting. But it will recover as one which executes similar opportunities on a different basis. That is according to one of the arch deal makers responsible […]

SANTA BARBARA — Advertisers must reduce the number of ads to which they expose viewers on different devices if they want to avoid putting them off and turning them away. That is the view of one ad agency exec searching for technology to reduce the frequency of ads. They key, says Tim Spengler, the president […]

SANTA BARBARA — Around the new TV industry, sentiment is growing that there are too many ads on screen. As the average total duration of ads on US TV has climbed to 22 minutes per hour, subscription, ad-free video services have risen in popularity. That is prompting a recalibration, with many networks committing to air […]

Now that there is a plethora of vendor measuring TV advertising exposure and using attribution technology to link consumer outcomes to that exposure, advertisers will demand a different kind of success from TV. That is according to the engineering and product chief at a company offering such services. In this video interview, Anthony Skinner of […]

The organization formed to smoothe the path to cable TV ad sales almost 40 years ago is rebooting itself for the age of data-based TV ad buys. Operated by Comcast, Charter and Cox Communications, NCC Media launched in 1981 to provide a common way for ad buyers to get on to disparate and disconnected cable, satellite and […]

A central question posed by one of Google’s leading AI programs is: “What if solving one problem could unlock solutions to thousands more?” That is what Google is trying to solve with DeepMind. And DeepMind has been busy answering that question, including by writing AlphaGo, an advanced AI program that has become skilled at playing […]

Around the industry, the challenge of figuring out audience members’ identities has become a leading imperative. But how effective are attempts at solving identity, really? Not effective enough, according to the co-founder of one mobile-specific ad-tech vendor. “Identity is an interesting challenge because that fundamentally drives the entire fabric of digital advertising.” says Abhay Singhal, […]