Robert Andrews

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 […]

COLOGNE — It’s been a long, slow time coming – but now traditional TV is about to undergo a big disruption that it must respond to quickly, says a veteran ad man from the BBC’s commercial arm who now runs an ad-tech outfit. Whilst music and then newspapers were buffeted by digital winds of change, ye olde TV […]

COLOGNE — Last year, 4C Insights of Chicago bought itself a leg up in the fusion of social and TV advertising, by acquiring TV monitoring outfit Teletrax from Civolution, to know what’s airing when and where. Now the online ad targeting outfit is tooling up for further expansion, by taking a $26m series C investment from Kayne […]

WASHINGTON, DC — Ten years ago, blogging wasn’t new. People had been using weblogs to post tidbits and updates for a couple of years already. But Chris Cillizza saw an opportunity. The journalist launched The Washington Post’s The Fix to provide a unique take on political news, in a market that was already becoming crowded. “When […]

COLOGNE — The world’s biggest ad agency holding group may soon spend more money with Mark Zuckerberg than with Rupert Murdoch, as it aims to shrink its reliance on Google in the media mix. But its CEO is still searching for other horses to back, in a digital ad world that is increasingly led by just two runners. Sir Martin Sorrell reveals to Beet.TV […]

WASHINGTON, DC — Over the last couple of decades, there have been many extensions and plugins that aim to let web users annotate the pages they browse. The latest is Genius, the site which, previously, let users annotate song lyrics to provide greater insight but which this year opened the technology up to any web page. Chris […]

COLOGNE — In the last few years of advertising technology innovation, many ad-tech vendors’ sales strategies have looked like an aggressive playbook for disruption. But the TV industry industry looks far less tolerant to that kind of enforced change. After all, it remains fairly resilient, and holds a lot of the cards still in its […]

COLOGNE — The media agency is changing. In a world where clients can do more themselves, or go elsewhere for services, agencies may be under threat. Michael Kassan thinks he has seen the future for a rejuvenated, more relevant model. “We just completed advising AT&T … a month ago …on the largest single review in history, I […]

COLOGNE — Is a big touchscreen in a car a driving aid – or a media device? Is an internet-connected fridge one of life’s little efficiencies, or a chance to communicate with householders? And how do you dress up these innovations anyway? Those were some of the questions on lips at the big DMEXCO marketing conference […]

COLOGNE — Publishers like The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Sky News, Facebook and YouTube are now gaining traction for their 360-degree and virtual reality video productions. Could advertisers do the same? In this interview with Beet.TV, Starcom Worldwide Global Brand President Lisa Donohue joins the excitement with an emphatic ‘yes’. But how should brands and […]

WASHINGTON, DC — A presidential election cycle is a big deal for any US paper, but few more so than The Washington Post. So WaPo, now under Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ ownership, is upping the game, building on its its text reporting heritage with even more video. The difference from previous years? More kinds of video, distributed […]

COLOGNE – Google’s efforts to break in to TV seem to have had as many reboots as a dodgy old laptop. But the lingering developments in Chromecast, Google Fiber and more give broadcasters the jitters, says an ad-tech exec who meets with them frequently. “Google sees intermediaries like television networks as being unnecessary,” according to Videology‘s chief commercial […]