Robert Andrews

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 […]

So-called addressable TV is lighting the way for new brands toward a kind of future TV advertising that is customized and targeted at individual households. That’s bringing in new, smaller advertisers for which TV may previously have been too costly. But one surprising new group of buyers is those from overseas. At Cadreon, IPG Mediabrands’ ad-tech unit, […]

Around the world, TVs are getting connected to the internet. And that means big new possibilities for the ways in which advertisers can reach viewers. For one, internet targeting capabilities support the delivery of individual ads tailored to specific households. It’s a theory that was a long time coming, but now the reality is hitting. […]

The masses are coming. The online masses consuming TV through all manner of internet-connected devices, that is. All of a sudden, TV isn’t what it used to be. And neither will TV advertising be. The ability to target individual viewers may signal the death knell for a sector that has long sold its spots on loose, […]

It’s the behemoth media platform that has a hand in a large proportion of US TV ad spending. So why do so few people talk about WideOrbit? The San Francisco-based company offers a software platform that handles scheduling, billing, content management and invoicing for mostly local TV ads around the US. CEO Eric Mathewson tells Beet.TV […]

The opportunity to deliver customised TV ads tailored to individual households is new and fast emerging, and you could scarcely pick a better exemplar for the discipline than an election. Fortunately, an election is happening right now. And addressable TV has been used by candidates to deliver messages in key states, tailored to individual homes with target voters. “The […]

ORLANDO – Advertisers are cottoning on to one of modern marketing’s key challenges – how to address a customer nowadays when they leave different pieces of themselves on different devices? The solution lays in combining data sets in to a single customer “identity” profile. But, already, that discipline is transforming in to more than just combining and […]

ORLANDO — The corporate media world may be stuck in pending regulatory approval of AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner. But that isn’t stopping Time Warner’s Turner from pressing ahead in to the future of advertising. Turner is fresh from winning ANA Genius Award for analytics science, as it looks to innovate on how advertisers can […]

ORLANDO — Earlier this summer, Hulu began offering interactive digital ads made for the TV screen, when viewers watch through gadgets like Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire Stick and games consoles. The agency involved in those ads is Havas, but the technology outfit enabling them is BrightLine. Now BrightLine says it will build on the […]

Web users don’t like too many ads, and TV viewers may feel the same way, too. That’s why, last October, Turner made a big announcement that it would reduce the ad load in some of its TV broadcasts. One year on, how is the initiative faring? Donna Speciale, Turner Ad Sales’ president, tells Beet.TV the early results are exploratory […]

By many accounts, there are now around 45mn US households which can receive so-called addressable TV ads, those targeted at the individual household level. But that’s fewer than half the total number of TV households, and getting here has been a slow slog. Yet the inertia is not stopping advertisers from embracing opportunities around TV targeting nevertheless. […]

By most accounts, this presidential election campaign has been a momentously bad moment for democracy. But news networks are benefitting as viewers plug in to watch the horror show unfold, and advertisers follow them in. CNN is finding a bump from both planned and unexpected executions, according to its owner Turner’s ad sales president Donna Speciale. “News has […]

COLOGNE — Over the last year, we have reported how Belgian quad-play operator Proximus is trying to balance its broadband and TV subscribers’ customer experience with offering better ad targeting to clients. Now the outfit is ready to find out how well that balance can work, by lighting up a new addressable TV ad offering for Proximus TV, […]

COLOGNE – How does a media company stay abreast of and adopt new technologies to best effect. For many, the answer is to create a “lab”, a division whose sole purpose is to let in-house geeks test out and apply transformational new tech. And IPG Mediabrands is no different. Its IPG Media Lab is devoted to finding […]

Of all the programmatic trading platforms out in the market, AcuityAds may have been one of those the limelight has so far evaded. But that may be set to change, after the company went public to finance its current round of growth. First founded in 2009 and also offering a data management platform, the outfit listed […]

COLOGNE — Once upon a time, multi-platform proliferation meant “desktop, tablet and smartphone”. Now, we are entering an era when virtual worlds, connected toasters and even unmanned aerial vehicles represent new challenges and opportunities for brands. Neil Carty, innovation strategy SVP of marketing consulting agency MediaLink, calls all the new platforms “data exhausts”, emitting cues that marketers can better use to […]

COLOGNE – So-called “programmatic” methods of targeting or trading advertising may be typically associated with online media platforms – but that doesn’t mean something of the techniques can’t also be applied to linear TV. Indeed, programmatic looks like playing a part in the next TV upfront season beginning next spring, when networks will tout their upcoming shows to advertisers […]