See replay of our interviews at NAB in Las Vegas on our Mogulus channel.
Note: The image above is not the player but a still image.
— Andy Plesser
Live from Las Vegas from the Floor of NAB
Recent Videos
Comcast’s Karen Babcock: AI Can Transform Ads From ‘Interruption’ to ‘Complement’ of Content
LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence can reshape advertising from disruptive interruption to emotional complement by matching ad tone to surrounding content, preventing jarring transitions that produce negative attention as opposed to the good kind. “Let’s say someone was watching Good Will Hunting. It’s the iconic scene where Ben Affleck’s in the bar in Boston; it’s […]
Open Web Needs Its Own AI Interface in Next Revenue Chapter: Taboola’s Adam Singolda
LAS VEGAS – Adam Singolda sees consumer behavior shifting faster than most media companies expected. Large language models such as ChatGPT are becoming a daily interface for information, he said, but the experience remains uneven across platforms. Some LLMs are ad free, others are ad-supported, while the open web sits largely outside those walled gardens. […]
Streaming Ad Market Matures as Programmatic, AI, Contextual Targeting Accelerate: FreeWheel’s Kathy Argyriou
The U.S. streaming advertising market reached a turning point in 2025 as a surge of ad-supported inventory reshaped pricing, buying strategies and definitions of premium television, says Kathy Argyriou, head of publisher sales at FreeWheel, a unit of Comcast. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan, Argyriou said the rollout of ad-supported tiers from major streaming […]
CTV Emerges as Performance Channel Amid Shift to Lower-Funnel Ad Buying: Roku
LAS VEGAS – Roku is leaning into a message advertisers have long wanted to hear: connected TV can now drive measurable business outcomes, not just awareness. Speaking with Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES 2026, Lauren Benedict, vice president of global ad sales and partnerships at Roku, said the company is seeing growing demand […]
Best Buy’s Derek Bodurka: Gaming’s Grip on Consumers’ Passion has Lessons for Brands
LAS VEGAS — Gaming purchases differ from typical consumer electronics transactions because they’re driven by passion and escape rather than necessity, creating emotional connections that retailers can leverage for brand partnerships. “A lot of consumer electronics is based on necessity. When we think about gaming, it’s all about the one,” Derek Bodurka, partner and category […]
Swoop’s Kurt Robinson: TV Must ‘Stay The Backbone’ as Pharma Embraces New Delivery Mechanisms
LAS VEGAS — Pharmaceutical advertising has been the backbone of TV ad strategies since the inception of the medium. But maintaining that central role requires embracing new delivery platforms including YouTube and connected TV as consumer viewing behavior shifts. “It’s about staying the backbone [of TV],” Kurt Robinson, evp, business development at Swoop, told Beet.TV […]
Why Agencies Should Never Fully Outsource Video Buying to AI
LAS VEGAS — The advertising industry is racing to automate video buying, but one agency executive is urging a more measured approach. Rather than handing over the keys to the machines, Mike Treon, head of CTV and video strategy at PMG, thinks the real opportunity lies in collapsing repetitive workflows while keeping humans firmly in […]
2026 Marks Turning Point for Unified, Self-Serve Retail Media: Criteo’s Sherry Smith
LAS VEGAS – The retail media sector is entering a pivotal year marked by consolidation, self-service tools and less fragmentation across retailers, said Sherry Smith, president of retail media at Criteo. Speaking with Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES 2026, Smith argued that true growth in retail media networks (RMNs) will depend on brands’ […]
Custom Audiences will Take Center Stage at Beet Retreat San Juan: Alliant’s Margo Hock
LAS VEGAS – As the advertising industry debates how quickly agentic AI will move from theory to practice, Alliant says the shift is already tangible inside its business. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Margo Hock, vice president of digital partners, said Alliant’s acquisition of AnalyticsIQ is now entering a critical phase. […]
How In-Store Media Captures Intent at the Moment of Choice: Stratacache’s Chris Riegel
Retail stores are already crowded with visual cues, from packaging to printed signs. The challenge for brands is breaking through that noise without slowing shoppers down. Chris Riegel, founder and chief executive of Stratacache, frames the store as a stage where motion can guide attention and influence choice. “If you think of a retail space […]
Innovid’s Christopher Murphy: Creative and Media Are Still Too Siloed
LAS VEGAS — Creative and media teams frequently operate in isolation and optimize independently despite opportunities to integrate contextual signals across both functions for improved campaign performance. “Too often they’re in silos and optimize separately,” Christopher Murphy, svp, strategy and business development at Innovid, told Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES. “The fidelity of […]
AI Is Turning Static TV Ad Packages Into Real-Time, Cross-Platform Orchestration: FreeWheel’s Soo Jin Oh
LAS VEGAS – For years, buying premium video advertising meant navigating a maze of separate workflows, incompatible systems, and manual processes that kept linear television and streaming in distinct silos. But that fragmentation is now collapsing under the weight of artificial intelligence, which is reshaping how advertisers access and activate across the entire video landscape. […]
Marketing to AI Agents Is the Next Frontier, IAB’s Goldstein Says
The advertising industry has spent decades perfecting how to reach consumers. Now it faces a new challenge: marketing to machines. As artificial intelligence reshapes how people discover and purchase products, marketers are starting to grapple with ensuring AI agents recommend your brand when consumers ask for help. “I’m calling it B2A marketing,” said Sheryl Goldstein, […]
Omnicom Media’s Joanna O’Connell: Brands Must Access ‘Emotional Availability,’ Not Just Eyeballs
LAS VEGAS — Consumers increasingly feel brands don’t care about them as companies reduce brand investment under pressure to prove immediate value, creating disconnection that surfaces in research showing most people believe advertisers pursue transactions rather than relationships. “Something like 71% of consumers have said, ‘I think they’re only after me for my dollars.’ Meanwhile, […]
B2B Advertisers are Ditching Search for CTV, Intuit Wants to Help Them
LAS VEGAS — Are the days of B2B marketers waiting around for small business owners to type their needs into a search box numbered? A growing cohort of advertisers is realizing that, by the time someone searches for “freight logistics” or “business insurance,” they’ve already made up their mind – and the bidding war has […]
Icon International’s Reid Steinberg: Principal-Based Buying Shifts Media From ‘Expense Item’ To ‘Profit Maker’
LAS VEGAS — Principal-based media buying can best be seen as a not just an update of traditional “media barter” arrangements, but as a way to solve the problems associated with that old form of agency/publisher deals. As Incon International’s Reid Steinberg notes, principal-based buys can help advertisers unlock additional budgetary spending. On top of […]
AI Agents Will Make Millisecond Optimizations Humans Can’t, Dentsu’s McDonagh Says
LAS VEGAS — The future of premium video advertising may be decided in milliseconds – faster than any human trader could ever react. That’s the promise of agentic buying, which enables autonomous systems to optimize campaigns at the line-item level in real time. The technology represents a fundamental shift in how media is transacted, moving […]
Ampersand’s Justin Rosen: Poor AI Training Data Risks ‘Doom Loop’ of Degraded Insights
LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence models trained on low-quality data risk generating meaningless insights that then degrade further as models train on their own flawed outputs, creating a destructive cycle that obscures actual campaign performance. “One thing that I fear, especially with all the excitement around AI, is that the quality of the training data […]
Commerce GO, Agent-Ready APIs Help to Tackle Ad Fragmentation: Criteo’s Todd Parsons
LAS VEGAS – Media fragmentation is reshaping performance marketing in two ways, said Todd Parsons, Chief Product Officer and President of Performance Media at Criteo. Consumers move fluidly across discovery, consideration and purchase channels, while marketing organizations still operate in channel silos. Speaking with Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES 2026, Parsons said the […]
Albertsons Media Collective Targets Real-Time Optimization for In-Store Screens
For decades, the grocery aisle was a static environment where cardboard displays and price tags did the heavy lifting. Now, the physical retail environment is undergoing a digital overhaul designed to rival the programmatic capabilities of the open web – turning brick-and-mortar locations into networked media channels. By integrating sensor technology and centralized content management, […]
Speed Is the New Strategy: TikTok on Brands and the Pace of Culture
LAS VEGAS — The traditional marketing planning cycle is dead. That’s the stark message for advertisers trying to succeed on discovery-driven platforms. For brands accustomed to lengthy campaign development timelines, the platforms where consumers now spend their time operate on an entirely different clock. “The speed at which you have to drive innovation and decision […]