Robert Andrews

MIAMI — Addressable? Advanced? The way that television advertising is bought, targeted, sold and measured is changing. The new connection of TVs and TV boxes to the internet is offering up household-level targeting, when ads are fuelled by smart data sets. In this panel video interview at Beet Retreat 2016, Group M’s MODI Media president Mike Bologna, […]

MIAMI — Want to target new TV ads with scientific precision? More and more US TVs are getting lit up with connectivity, making the real problem a back-end one. In other words, getting hold of the right data, and combining it in the right way, is becoming the new transformative opportunity in future TV advertsiing. […]

MIAMI — It’s become known as one of the major video ad-tech platforms on the block, allowing publishers and ad buyers to plan and executed targeting campaigns using an online dashboard. But Videology didn’t start here. Nearly a decade ago, things were a little more hands-on – and the company had to hold its customers hands […]

MIAMI — What do Santa Claus and a stick of gum teach marketers about the future of advertising? Turns out, plenty, according to one ad-tech firm helping advertisers leverage social data to target TV and other commercials. 4C Insights’ Anupam Gupta calls it “affinity targeting”, and he says the new technique could be powerful. “So, if you think […]

MIAMI — “Never the twain shall meet”, the saying goes. But, in the historically-separate worlds of TV and online ad sales, the walls are finally starting to come down. “Convergence is a word that comes up in every single panel that we’re all at, but convergence is real,” says Jason Burke, VP of strategic development […]

MIAMI — This year, it’s launched new services to help advertisers overcome viewability issues for mobile video. Next year, it scales up to the big screen. Integral Ad Science, whose technologies help advertisers and agencies understand the viewability and quality of the inventory they are buying, is coming to TV. “2017’s going to bring a lot […]

MIAMI — It’s the outfit that promises advertisers guaranteed business returns, even from television advertising. So what does Simulmedia say is the key to unlocking results? Brands win best when they bring first-party data to the table, says the company’s Jeff Storan. “The types of advertisers with which we’ve been able to deliver the most value are […]

MIAMI — If you thought advertising technology was becoming like rocket science, you may surprised how right you are – next up, TV ad-tech is going in to space. TV ad technology provider INVIDI, which enables household-level TV ad targeting for broadcast companies more used to beaming out a single message en masse, is getting excited about a technology […]

MIAMI – The great video ad-tech consolidation wave is continuing, with a twist.  AT&T and DISH have announced plans to acquire addressable TV ad-tech vendor INVIDI. But they are not doing it alone – the pair are joined in the deal by fellow acquirer WPP, the world’s largest ad agency holding group, though it is AT&T […]

MIAMI — “Multi-screen”, “converged”, “transmedia”, or “platform-neutral”? The number of ways you could describe the new challenge of reaching consumers across multiple devices is mindboggling. But one word is inarguable – “complex”. That’s why the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video, a collection of video providers advocating alongside the video ad-tech vendor, is aiming to stitch back together […]

MIAMI — TV is changing, and advertising with it. As TV services light up with internet connectivity, so, too, does the promise of serving individually-targeted ads to TV, in the same way as they already are online. Just don’t expect that prospect to go large any time soon. “There’s a lot of experimentation going on […]

MIAMI — Big brands are used to using mass media to reach mass audiences. Now that they can use the same media to reach tightly-defined ones – like individual TV-viewing households – they are having to learn new tricks. “The juggling act between scale and targetability is the fulcrum that we have to juggle,” says MasterCard’s media […]

BOSTON — If data is “the new oil”, it pays not to spill any. But publishers are too readily emptying the can over to middlemen who are taking its value for themselves. That’s according to one boss whose position at the top of a programmatic video ad platform has led him to conclude publishers need to […]

MIAMI — That Lumascape is a pretty mess. In other words, customers like the new super-powers bestowed on them by ad-tech – but they are confused by a procession of vendors that all claim to do the same thing. That’s why Dan Bruinsma is looking forward to the kind of consolidation heralded by the latest big ad-tech M&A […]

MIAMI — The auto industry is a pretty specific one. Despite the end products being badged by just a handful of marques, it is individual local dealers, and not the brands themselves, with whom customers end up transacting. Not only that. Despite copious research being carried out online, most purchases are overwhelmingly still made on the forecourt, […]

BOSTON — We’ve had pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll, in- and out-stream. But what if the future of video advertising lay more closely at the heart of the media that carry it? That is what’s on the mind of Alex Drosin, President, North America, of Massive Interactive, a tech company helping build mobile and TV apps for TV operators […]

BOSTON — If you think paying $100 a month for a mega suite of 500 channels, most of which you never watch, is overkill, you’re not alone. That’s why we are seeing the rise of the so-called “skinny bundle”, a cut-down cable package which operators hope can reduce cord cutting. But Tom Morgan sees the […]

It started as a simple tool to upload videos to multiple services. But now TubeMogul is becoming the latest addition to Adobe’s media technology stack. The Emeryville, CA-based company has just confirmed an agreement to be acquired by the digital media powerhouse for $540m. What does Adobe want with TubeMogul? According to its announcement: “Adobe’s acquisition of […]

CHICAGO – In this fast-moving industry, it can be easy to keep your head down, obsess over the latest media metrics, and not really look up to see the bigger picture in life. But life forced Tracey Scheppach to do just that, when her son Ryan, then aged just seven, was diagnosed with leukemia. The next […]

Together, they helped pioneer Cablevision’s approach to next-generation TV advertising. Now executives Kristin Dolan and Ben Tatta have left to form their own company providing set-top box data to marketers. The move comes after Dolan’s Dolan Family Ventures acquired the existing Analytics Media Group (AMG), a data analytics firm with a background in politics, to immediately […]