Andy Plesser

Please join me, your colleagues and executives from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico for an update on the island’s children and the essential work of the Clubs. Tuesday: February 5 at Xandr/AT&T 1 Rockefeller Plaza, 5th Floor 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. The program will include an update on the island and […]

LAS VEGAS –  A huge thank you Sarah Hofstetter, Bryan Wiener and the Comscore crew for hosting an awesome party at the Cosmopolitan on my birthday (1/8) and to celebrate Beet.TV’s thirteenth year.  Thirteen, a milestone in digital publishing, maybe?   A reason enough for a party, why not! I was honored that so many good […]

SAN JUAN, PR — The Beet Retreat gala dinner and fundraiser at the 400-year old San Cristobal Fort was the subject of this news segment on the San Juan/CBS affiliate station. The event raised funds for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico.   Many thanks to the the U.S. Park Service for welcoming us and […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Puerto Rico’s most celebrated chef, James Beard Award honoree Jose Enrique,  cooked for the closing gala dinner and fundraiser at the Beet Retreat last Thursday evening at the 400-year-old Spanish fort, Castillo San Cristobal. The chef, who owns his namesake restaurants in San Juan and at the St. Regis resort […]

Longtime WPP executive Mark Read, who has been serving as interim co-COO in the aftermath of the departure of the April Martin Sorrell, has been selected as the new CEO of WPP.

Matt Spiegel, managing director at MediaLink, has joined the giant data company TransUnion to head its new formed media vertical, focused on addressable solutions. In a press release, the company explains:  “His expertise will further TransUnion’s ability to deliver the addressable solutions required by enterprise marketers and media companies to make informed modeling, strategic investment […]

After taking the year off in the aftermath from hurricane Maria, we are headed back to Puerto Rico for the seventh year of our executive retreats on the Caribbean island.   This year we will will be at the newly re-opened, icon El San Juan Hotel. It will be an incredible three days of intense sessions, […]

CANNES – It’s not just morally right, but diversity in the workplace is a business imperative, explains Kelle Coleman, Nielsen’s Head of Corporate Partnerships, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with her last month at Cannes in Color event, immediately following a session featuring Proctor & Gamble’s marketing chief Marc Pritchard who implored to […]

P&G endured considerable pushback for its video advertising series the Talk, a series of vignettes of African American parents speaking to their young children about growing up in a racial biased society.   Difficult as it was, it was necessary to 0pen a dialogue, Marc Pritchard,  P&G’s marketing chief, told the Cannes in Color session at […]

CANNES – A social media pioneer, who was the first digital director at Ralph Lauren and now heads digital at global powerhouse CAA-Global Brands Management Group, Kendra Bracken-Ferguson says that diversity needs to start with personal outreach and mentoring. CAA-GBG’s clients include companies as Coca-Cola, Hershey’s and Cheesecake Factory, as well as artists Jennifer Lopez, […]

New York adtech company MediaMath has raised $225 million to fund expansion and acquisitions from investment firm Searchlight Capital Partners, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The investment brings the valuation of the company to $1 billion, the Journal says citing sources. Earlier this year, Beet.TV interviewed MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki. The topic was the […]

CANNES – A big topic at Cannes was the imperative for the industry to become more racially diverse as a business priority.  One essential step is to get more people of color into the creative process, says Steven Wolfe Pereria, CMO of Quantcast. In America, marketing is now fully multicultural, and the industry has to […]

When the marketing chief of the world’s biggest advertiser gives a clear directive, the industry listens and conversations begin. At Cannes Lions, P&G’s Marc Pritchard, who has spearheaded several high impact initiatives, implored the media and advertising  industries to embrace racial diversity.  He stressed diversity as both the right thing to do, and as a […]

CANNES — Among the most significant problem in achieving  diversity in the adtech/media and advertising industries is the “supply chain” of interested entrants, says Kirk McDonald, CMO of AT&T Advertising & Analytics. Career paths and opportunities need to be surfaced to young people starting in high school, he says. In this interview he also addresses […]

CANNES – While diversity is a societal priority, it is essential for business growth, explains Teneshia Jackson Warner, founder & CEO of the urban market consulting shop Egami. Her firm created  The Talk for P&G,  a series of video ads of conversations on race between African-American parents and their young children. Warner was a participant […]

CANNES – Started three years ago on the true[X] yacht as a networking event for people of color at the festival, the program Cannes in Color has morphed into a major industry diversity movement called the I.D.E.A. Initiative. This year, it grabbed the spotlight at Cannes Lions with hundreds of attendees gathered at the Spotify […]

Today, AT&T announced it would acquire New York-based adtech firm AppNexus.   In February at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, we interviewed founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley about the company’s growth and expanding efforts in the video marketplace.  We are republishing that video today

Lots going on: Among the highlights will be Joe Marchese, president/revenue FOX Networks Group, returning to the Freewheel/Comcast stage Tuesday morning for another Festival highlight.  We have reposted this video of Joe from last June’s FreeWheel/Comcast cabana gig.  Welcome back Joe! Big Plans: We have several programs of partnerships set for this week.  Our home […]

Amazon is a  “monopoly.”   But whether it, and the other four U.S. tech giants (Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple) and the two Chinese (Alibaba and Tencent), will continue to grow depends on government regulation, says Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder of WPP. While not predicting imminent government intervention, he notes that these companies are increasingly in […]

While it’s valuable to to use data to maximize media buys around key audiences, it’s essential that content is effectively matched to the audience segment with the right creative version.    The concept of “dynamic” or “creative optimization” is something that Saatchi & Saatchi is doing.  In solving this, it has found the elusive “Holy […]