David Kaplan
Gracenote’s Bill Michels: Scene-Level Targeting Only Works If You Can Do It At Scale
LAS VEGAS — Targeting ads to specific scenes within TV content sounds like the ultimate precision play. The challenge is that precision without scale doesn’t spend budgets, and most scene types don’t appear frequently enough to matter. “Someone’s in a shower scene, going to sell them soap. How many shower scenes are there? There’s not […]
Index Exchange’s James Wilhite: Gracenote Integration Promises CTV Proof-of-Purchase
LAS VEGAS — Buyers can now verify connected TV purchases at the show level, seeing specific line items, CPMs, impressions, and total media spend rather than trusting that budgets allocated toward major television events actually reached intended inventory. “Before a couple of days ago, it was impossible for a buyer to know exactly what they […]
Dentsu X’s Maggie Summers: CTV Finally Hit Critical Mass for Performance Marketing
Connected TV advertising has reached a tipping point where impression volume, measurement capabilities, and targeting precision converge to create genuine performance marketing opportunities. “CTV’s finally hit that point of critical mass. So there’s enough impressions in the marketplace to really effectively reach consumers who are in that shopping mindset,” Maggie Summers, EVP and head of […]
Amazon’s Charlotte Maines: Vast Authenticated Reach Brings Advertisers’ Storytelling From ‘Doorstep To Bedroom’
LAS VEGAS — Amazon’s nearly total reach — 90% of U.S. customers across authenticated devices — means that advertisers can tell personalized stories that follow consumers throughout their day, from users’ Fire TV’s in their living room to bedtime Alexa smart speaker podcasts. “If you think about it as an advertiser, [there are] so many […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
WPP Media’s Luis Martinez: Retail Media Reaches ‘Tipping Point’ Beyond Transactions to Brand Building
LONDON — Retail media is evolving from a transaction-focused performance channel toward brand building as companies leverage data and signals to shape customer connections across multiple touchpoints. “Companies can actually use the data in two ways. One is obviously the transaction that will always be there, will remain strong, but also brand building,” Luis Martinez, […]
TiVo Ad’s Chris Kleinschmidt: CTV Home Screens Are Billboards With Better Targeting
LONDON — Connected TV home screens function as digital billboards that capture viewer attention before content consumption begins, offering targeting capabilities unavailable in traditional out-of-home advertising. “It is very similar to out of home in the sense that it is a billboard. For lack of a better word, it is a billboard on the homepage […]
Digital Envoy’s Charlie Johnson: LocID Anchors Identity On Locations Instead Of IPs
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF — IP addresses for targeting is a particular challenge for marketers due to the volatile, unpredictable nature of signals that change locations constantly, creating measurement and attribution problems that a location-focused approach aims to stabilize. Digital Envoy, the data provider that focuses on geo-location, sought to respond to those issues in […]
Mediaocean’s Ramsey McGrory: ‘You Have to Wallow in the Mud’ on the Road to AI Transformation
LONDON — The ad industry is far past the “experimental stage” of artificial intelligence use cases, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the messy complexity associated with the transition is over. “You have to wallow in the mud, which is there’s so much change happening and it’s such transformative change,” Ramsey McGrory, President of Mediaocean’s omnichannel […]
Best Buy’s Jen Jensen: Why Consumer Electronics Shoppers Represent ‘Unique Customer Landscape’
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF. — Best Buy can tie almost all its transactions back to individual customers, an ability the company considers market leading that’s based on precise measurement and attribution across the complex consumer electronics purchase path. “We have a 93% revenue identification rate. So what that means is 93% of our transactions we […]
WPP Media’s Danielle Darko: Attention Shifts From Measurement to Planning Tool
LONDON — Some advertisers have progressed beyond measuring attention as a signal to using it as a planning currency for more than a year. Still, many others are just beginning to analyze attention metrics from existing campaigns. “I know a sport brand, for instance, which has been using attention from a planning perspective for over […]
Stratacache’s Russell Young: In-Store Retail Media Shifts From ‘Pilot Purgatory’ to Enterprise Scale
In-store retail media is maturing beyond pilot programs toward enterprise-wide networks as national brands commit repeat investments and standardized measurement becomes urgent rather than aspirational. “We’re seeing that national brands are shifting real media dollars [from online] to in-store with repeat investments. That demand for standardized KPIs has really become urgent, and that’s causing a […]
TelevisaUnivision’s Bethany Hillman: Linear Dollars have Fully Arrived to CTV
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF. – Linear TV ad budgets have gone from a steady migration to connected TV to a full-on deluge after two decades of industry predictions. The shift has followed linear viewership rates that push buyers toward direct insertion order deals seeking CPM guarantees and impression volume. “I’ve been saying this for 20 […]
NBCUniversal Launches ‘LIVE Total Impact’ Tool to Extend Tentpole Event Engagement
NBCUniversal today announced a suite of new cross-platform data and technology products that promises to enhance the consumer experience and prove real-time impact for advertisers. Chief among NBCU’s solutions was the introduction of LIVE Total Impact, which the media giant is billing as industry’s first cross-platform tool designed to leverage real-time viewership of live tentpole […]





