Robert Andrews

LONDON — Recent estimates are that around 46% of US households can receive household-specific, individually-targeted TV ads, through so-called “addressable” TV advertising. But, whilst US penetration is high, it is not necessarily the country leading the tech charge, says one exec with a multi-country view of the opportunity. “We see, in the addressable TV world. very much […]

LONDON — European satellite TV operator Sky is far more than a one-trick pony. As well as beaming satellite TV for the last couple of decades, Sky is also a telco, a TV channel operator and an ad sales house. That diversity gives it breadth that extends beyond its own platform, and beyond its own content. Case in point […]

MIAMI — Back in July, when the sun was still high in the sky and the presidential election was yet to rip the US apart, an event took place in ad-tech land that united two disparate tribes. Mediaocean, whose software helps advertisers automate their operations, acquired INVISION, a peer whose technology helps TV companies do […]

MIAMI — New technology means changing priorities. And marketers’ top priority is now being usurped, as new opportunities present new primary goals. That’s according to one ad-tech exec who spends his life talking with brands about the changing nature of their work. “Used to be, marketing was perceived as a cost center and the primary mission was […]

MIAMI — There are now several technologies coming to the table that aim to help broadcast operators dynamically switch commercials in their ad break to specific viewing households. But, by and large, just like connected TV itself, they depend on boxes, dongles, consoles or widgets connected to a television set. What if you could do dynamic ad replacement in […]

MIAMI — It’s called broad-cast for a reason. TV advertising, especially when its national, reaches a big audience. But in that reach also lays inefficiency. If TV ads reach consumers who can’t even access the buyers’ services, that’s wastage. But new-wave TV-buying techniques, infused with data, can help the problem. “I live in Manhattan,” Videa sales […]

LONDON — When you are facing the challenge both to beef-up your technology capability and to roll out across channels at the same time, should you pick multiple tools that can help each deployment, or one that claims to do it all? Many tech vendors these days are fond of boasting their “end-to-end” status, claiming to be able […]

LONDON — The organization charged with measuring UK TV viewing for channels’ advertisers, Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), used to be criticized for its traditionalist approach to the task – a 5,1oo-household panel method supposed to represent country-wide viewing in a multi-media age. But BARB is reinventing itself. The board already measures laptop, desktop and tablet TV viewing […]

MIAMI — For a modern advertiser, it’s a thorny problem. These days, your customers are reachable on all manner of different screens and devices that, whilst connected to the internet, are not connected to each other. It makes consumers schizophrenic. In other words, they have multiple identities, scattered across services. And that is a targeting nightmare. But many […]

MIAMI — The ability to target individual households with a medium that is traditionally more used to shouting at mass audiences is here and now. But it’s not universal – and it’s not yet living up to some of the wilder dreams of ad industry executives. But “addressable TV” is about to go large, and it’s time to […]

LONDON — About 42% of US homes are now able to receive so-called “addressable advertising” – TV ads custom-targeted at individual homes thanks to one of a variety of return-path TV systems. But how much of the multi-billion-dollar TV advertising industry could be funnelled through that channel in the years ahead. It’s early days, but […]

LONDON — In the emerging world of “addressable TV advertising” – in which operators can swap out a standard 30-second spot for one custom-targeted at a single viewer – cable and online platforms may appears to have the upper hand. But satellite is far from out of the game. UK satellite pay-TV operator Sky had its AdSmart […]

MIAMI — Celebrating its third birthday this quarter is Admore, it’s a division of Frank Canella’s Canella Media, a company aiming to bring direct-response mechanisms to television. Led by president Brendan Condon, a former AOL international ad exec, the Temecula, CA-based outfit’s platform numbers an automated system for using a single insertion order to buy across TV, […]

MIAMI — You may find yourself deciding between two cars, or cans of beans or a hotel chains this week. But when did your judgements about the brands involved really begin? Earlier than you might think, according to one ad-tech exec helping brands capitalise on targeted video and TV ads. In fact, in a world increasingly dominated […]

MIAMI — It’s a wide-open new marketing world, with a big new creative palette. But sometimes picking the right brush can be half the battle. MasterCard is one big brand with all the tools at its disposal. So how is it thinking about the right advertising tactics to deploy? In this video interview, MasterCard’s media SVP Ben Jankowski tells […]

MIAMI — So you have been running an online ad campaign, and how you’re keen to harness the possibilities afforded by new TV ad tactics. Can you use the same data to target the same kind of audience, in the old medium? Sure, you can – but doing so takes a bit of work, according […]

MIAMI — He famously under-spent his rival on TV ads, making greater hay from late-night tweets and sometimes outlandish monologues. So does Donald Trump’s eventual election suggest a crisis in TV ad effectiveness? When the most important political period in US democracy turns back the clock on what had been accelerating ad spend, is it time […]

MIAMI –The possibilities are endless, the data-points are infinite and opportunities to reach consumers abound. You want to allocate human staff to run all that? Good luck, says AudienceXpress‘s Walt Horstman – this level of complexity, in the new TV ad ecosystem, needs a fallback to code. “You apply an advanced dataset that is looking at … the audience impressions against […]

LONDON — In what is beginning to look like a season of exits for video ad-tech startups, addressable TV specialist INVIDI was last month acquired by AT&T, DISH and WPP. The 16-year-old company has come in to its own of late, by helping advertisers serve household-targeted ads in to TV streams in the two minutes per hour […]

LONDON — It just launched its new V6 set-top box and a weird Android tablet this week and, though the kit reportedly does not upgrade the advertiser offering, according to The Drum, UK cable operator Virgin Media is already helping serve targeted ads inside catch-up programming. Virgin Media, formed out of a merger of regional cable operators […]