Robert Andrews

To some, it may have gone under the radar a little, but Google operates an in-house team dedicated to working with ad agencies and brands. “Zoo is Google’s creative think tank for brands and agencies,” explains Zoo’s global chief creative officer Lars Bastholm, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “We help brands and agencies think more […]

So far, the discussion of so-called “programmatic”, automated digital advertising trading has centered on online display and video advertising. But what about advertising in content that no-one can see? Programmatic trading has already come to a number of audio platforms – Xaxis enabled an audio offering last year. And now one of the biggest out there, Spotify, has enabled the technology, […]

These days, it takes a lot to move an audience. In fact, it looks like all the all tricks in the marketer playbook don’t work so well anymore – nowadays, it’s going to take money, too. That’s according to an Adobe’s just-published Digital Insights Advertising Demand Report – a survey of 800m North American customers – which […]

COLOGNE — What’s the best way to deliver commercial viewing experiences to viewers in the interactive TV age? The new platform opportunity is considerable, but could be squandered by overly aggressive or jarring messaging. That’s why Interpublic’s IPG Mediabrands is partnering with interactive-TV advertising firm Innovid. The pair are collaborating to find the right recipe for […]

COLOGNE — Imagine if advertisers and broadcasters could know, with certainty, which TV shows viewers were watching, for how long and how attentive they were? That’s what companies like Samba TV are claiming to offer. Launched in 2008 and backed by investors including Mark Cuban, the outfit works by having software embedded on some 180m […]

It’s one of the thorniest problems in marketing today – how do you target a single user when that user leaves separate breadcrumb trails on disconnected devices? Brands recognise the problem – but they need to do more to recognise there are companies out there that can help. That’s according to an OpenX exec working […]

Bank Of America has joined the ranks of big-brand advertisers calling for Facebook’s advertising boasts to be more transparent, after the social network admitted inflating video metrics for two years. Last month, Facebook conceded it had erred in the way it calculates average video view duration, leading advertisers to believe in numbers that were actually overstated. “The error […]

COLOGNE — Advertisers have got better at using data to derive real meaning from campaigns – now they need to improve the way they port their messages to new platforms. That’s according to the woman who runs revenue at recently-acquired Yahoo. Lisa Utzschneider tells Beet.TV: “We’ve become much more sophisticated over time about how to turn […]

COLOGNE — Marketers’ imperatives have changed a lot. That’s why media agency holding group Publicis recently brought together many of its disparate capabilities together in to a new division, Performics, focused on executing performance-based media outcomes across the board. Performics’ CEO Michael Kahn says the agency covers a range of advertising channels: Biddable Programmatic Search Social Mobile Display Direct-response Direct-response […]

COLOGNE — Print media are used to wraparound ad formats, which see brands take over the front and back pages of newspapers or magazines. Online media are also catching up to a format that can both retain the primacy of the original product and offer brands big-league impact. You may have seen more and more websites offering […]

COLOGNE — Once upon a time, video was a landscape format. Now the rise of new platforms and services means we have square and even mobile-sized vertical to contend with. But what may be difficult, at first, for creative agencies to adjust for can end up being desirable to buyers and sellers alike. “On the publisher side, […]

COLOGNE — For some, it’s the holy grail of television – the ability to reach individual TV viewers with customized messages, overcoming the inefficiencies of mass reach. But is this advanced TV advertising all it’s cracked up to be? For Jon Heller, the opportunity is a mixed bag. “It’s a double-edged sword,” the co-founder of video ad-tech vendor FreeWheel tells Beet.TV […]

COLOGNE — It’s one of the biggest problems in advertising, even though many ad-tech vendors think they have solved the issue. “On average, anything from 40% to 60% of ads are served to the wrong audiences,” according to Stephen Webb, the EMEA regional director for Facebook’s Atlas ad server platform. “Which is why men are getting […]

COLOGNE — Now that Sky’s German and Italian operations are part of the same Sky Europe entity, the continental outposts’ activities are benefitting from technology developments led by the pay-TV and telco company’s UK division. Case in point – Sky Deutschland is now enabling dynamically-inserted ads – a technology which allows broadcasters to swap out default ads […]

COLOGNE — One source of ad demand is good, multiple sources all facing off against each other is better. That’s why video ad-tech platform Ooyala has combined its Pulse ad server and programmatic toolset to let publishers pool demand sources for better effect. Ooyala’s programmatic GM Scott Braley says the reboot is called a “Holistic Ad Decisioning” platform. According […]

COLOGNE — Virtual reality is no longer in the future, it’s here and now – figuring out what that means is the next step. To Suresh Vittal, the new VR immersion is a big deal, but also merely an extension of an approach companies should already have been heeding. “Brands can achieve sustainable competitive advantage from focusing on […]

COLOGNE — For one of the leading programmatic advertising technology outfits, it’s been a summer of announcements. Rubicon Project was tapped by Spotify to automate audio ad inventory, by an alliance of four leading US news publishers, by Flipboard to launch a mobile ad marketplace, and even launched an Olympics-themed ad marketplace with multiple publishers. For Jay […]

COLOGNE — Thank Brian O’Kelley for the new-wave way that publishers are maximizing yield by tapping in to multiple demand sources. In the words of the AppNexus CEO himself: “I invented header bidding back in 2009.” Using that technology, publishers don’t have to be hemmed to selling their space through just one ad exchange, they can take […]

COLOGNE — TV has always traded on showing a single ad to as large an audience as possible. But the medium is being turned on its head. Pretty soon, advertisers will be using it to show thousands of different ads to individual audiences of just one. When exactly that will happen is anyone’s guess. But “no […]

COLOGNE — In the TV series The X-Files, paranormal investigators Mulder and Scully had, at their disposal, a trio of good-guy computer hackers named The Lone Gunmen. What if hard-pressed advertisers, also searching for a solution, could call on such a squad, too? That would probably look a lot like White Ops, a group of do-good hackers […]