Robert Andrews

CANNES — Brands these days aren’t asking for much – just the ability to deliver the right message to the right consumer at the right time, across all media channels, globally and in real-time. If that seems like a tall order, there is still a growing array of publishers and ad-tech vendors seeking to give […]

There must be something about the air in Cannes that brings out a certain positivity. Vice Media arrived at the Cannes Lions advertising gathering in June with HBO having cancelled Vice News Tonight and Disney having written off its investment in the company. But, speaking with Beet.TV, the outfit’s international and global chief revenue officer […]

CANNES — Smart TVs offer amazing new opportunities to target viewers at the household level – but getting your head around what is still a fragmented and evolving ecosystem is a bit like herding cats. In a sit-down discussion at Cannes Lions, Tracey Scheppach – who encountered that challenge over years spent specialising in smart […]

Smaller national media markets are nimbler and offer more opportunity, so media measurer Nielsen plans to bring its new advanced TV offering to the UK. So says the recently-appointed global MD of Nielsen Media. Matt O’Grady just relocated to London after a decade with the company in New York. Nielsen recently acquired Sorenson Media, the […]

CANNES — European broadcasters know they desperately want to enable the delivery of so-called addressable TV advertising, the advertising tactic which allows custom ad swap-outs targeted at individual households or viewers. But two of Europe’s biggest markets actually have limits on the practice: In Germany, strict privacy regulation means broadcasters can’t use personal information to […]

CANNES – Across Europe, in multiple media industries, what once were competitors are coming together, forming a variety of ad sales cooperatives in a bid to pool inventory they hope can match the vast scale of Google and Facebook. That is stark contrast to the US, where many media houses remain in competition with both […]

CANNES — In the year of its tenth anniversary, and after five years working on the technology, Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) is bolting on machine learning to some of its existing services. NCS is the unit which uses consumer data to help consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies target ads more effectively. Coinciding with Cannes Lions, […]

CANNES – Over-the-top (OTT) TV viewing is exploding. Now OTT operators need to see their advertising revenue increase at the same pace. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Tariq Mahmoud, Roku head of international sales and strategy, describes a disconnect he expects will be closed in the next few years. ‘There’s this delta right now […]

The collection of modern, automated ad trading practices known as “programmatic” may seem to sit squarely with natively digital media and with on-demand video. But, little by little, other platforms are getting lit up with these new tricks, too – even good ‘ol linear TV. “On the linear side, (we) really have been focused on […]

CANNES — When Comcast acquired European satellite TV provider Sky last year, it didn’t just get a leading continental telco and TV operator; it also got one of the world’s earliest addressable TV pioneers. Sky launched AdSmart back in 2014, using its own customer data to analyze viewers on advertisers’ behalf and sending household-specific linear TV ads […]

CANNES — Over the last year, one new set of technology has risen in ad-tech buzzphrase prominence – the “identity graph’. But, what is an identity graph and why does it matter? Simply, an identity graph is the collection of data points from disparate devices that, when pieced together, add up to indicate a single […]

CANNES — In the rapidly-expanding kingdom of AT&T, Xandr, its unit for facilitating advanced TV ad buying, is playing a stronger role. Almost exactly a year after AT&T acquired ad-tech platform AppNexus, it has just rebadged AppNexus’ demand-side platform (DSP) as “Xandr Invest”, and allowed ad buyers to to target viewers using AT&T’s first-party data […]

CANNES — If you thought that putting up a news paywall shut out advertisers, think again. Time after time, newspapers which have made the switch – at least, the big ones – have hailed a stronger offering for advertising brands, not a diluted one. That has been one discovery of Joy Robins, four months after joining […]

CANNES — In 2019, “brand safety” is still a watchword for ad buyers who want to place their ads against the right kinds of content, and not get tripped up by cringeworthy juxtapositions. That is why MediaMath, a digital ad-buying platform, has just teamed up with IRIS.TV, a video technology vendor, to provide a “sentiment […]

Most viewers have never heard of it, but it is one of the biggest TV production houses in the world – and now Fremantle Media is also becoming an ad sales vehicle. Fremantle, owned by the RTL Group of Europe, produces hit entertainment franchises like American Idol, Britain’s Got Talent and The X-Factor. Mostly, of course, those shows […]

The UK’s leading commercial TV broadcaster has upped its commitment to programmatic TV and video ad sales, in a move that sees it partner with a big ad-tech supplier. The broadcaster, which airs Downton Abbey and Coronation Street in the UK, recently picked Amobee as the platform through which it will distribute its digital ad inventory. The UK’s […]

CANNES – Building the infrastructure required to deliver addressable TV ad campaigns at scale is a “10-year sprint” for the man charged with doing that for the world’s biggest media agency holding group. But Jakob Nielsen is having the time of his life. In 2017, WPP’s GroupM launched Finecast, aiming to “help advertisers address hard-to-reach […]

CANNES  — In the age when brand marketers can use cloud-based tools to carry out many of the functions of their media agencies, the prospect of disintermediation seems to pose a risk to the historic agency model. Omnicom Group media agency OMD understands that risk. Its global CEO Florian Adamski raised eyebrows around his company […]

CANNES — You don’t have to be operating digital media to benefit from digital advertising optimization. US Spanish-language broadcaster Univision is finding that there is still plenty more value to be mined from live linear TV, after refocusing on the medium following an earlier expansion in to digital and English-language content. “What’s unique about our […]

If advertising agencies were getting nervous about being disintermediated by brands in-housing their traditional agency functions, there may be some solace found on the Croisette. The rise of direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands apparently plays right in to agencies’ strengths, because D2C brands need strong opinions and they thrive on TV exposure. So says Malcolm Devoy, PHD […]