Robert Andrews

CANNES — In the last few years, we have seen a rush of companies scramble to offer services for the programmatic trading of online advertising. Traditional ad agencies have added programmatic services to their offering, even as programmatic ad tech vendors rise up and promise to to disintermediate those agencies. One company now claims to be toeing […]

CANNES — Time was, AOL was just your common or garden dial-up ISP. Now with a booming video empire and as part of the Verizon footprint, it is becoming a player in the converging TV and advertising spaces. That puts Dan Ackerman, AOL’s programmatic TV SVP, who came to AOL via its acquisition of the video ad-tech provider […]

CANNES — They have traditionally been regarded as two distinct places on the marketing “funnel”. But could “branding” and “performance” advertising now be colliding together? Whilst the former tactic aims to switch on consumer interest, the latter sees marketers pay for end results. Now there are so many ad technologies out there, things are changing, says Bob […]

CANNES — Programmatic has come a long way, and confused a lot of people along the journey. Now it’s time to simplify a technology that is the overriding priority for many a media agency. “Everybody needs to understand it and they need to understand the simplicity of it,” according to Houssein Houssaini, global head of programmatic solutions for […]

Mark D’Arcy thinks we are living through the most fertile era for creativity in eight decades. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he thinks we should simply get more creative. The chief creative officer of Facebook’s Creative Shop sees an “extraordinary opportunity” to “transform entire industries”. His group is a team of brand marketers, creative directors and strategists […]

CANNES — In June at Cannes Lions, Merkle, the independent data-driven ad-tech company, announced the launch of its Programmatic Addressable Marketplace, the latest ad targeting product to hit the market. As the company put it at the time, “PAM represents the industry’s first premium programmatic advertising solution that enables deterministic, people-based targeting and measurement across premium […]

Time and time again, Swedes emerge as some of the most creative people on the planet. Andreas Dahlqvist is no different. He founded DDB in Sweden and the Nordics in 2004. Under his leadership, the Gunn Report ranked the shop as the best creative agency in the region and the best digital and interactive agency […]

CANNES — In September, the 30-company advocacy group founded by video ad-tech company FreeWheel will be celebrating its first anniversary. The FreeWheel Council for Premium Video was formed last year to develop a strong and unified position on topics that matter to the premium video ecosystem. FreeWheel’s Agency and Brand Relations VP James Rothwell says the Council is focusing on four […]

Back in October, US satellite pay-TV company DISH Network launched an advertising exchange to help advertisers buy targeted, individualized ads shown to its eight million addressable households. The ads in question would come from the two minutes per hour of local commercial time in programming DISH enjoys, and would playback in both live and DVR-recorded TV. Most people […]

CANNES — In the emerging world of digital video advertising, now personalized ads can be made, on-the-fly, by assembling disparate scenes from alternate narratives in to a single, audience-specific ad spot. That’s the theory. So who’s responsible for the execution? Truth is, the new practice of dynamic ad creative is still shaking out – and whether it […]

CANNES — During its nine years as a digital marketing platform, Jivox has stayed relatively under the radar during what have been the boom years of the discipline. But now the company, whose IQ platform is used by clients including Bayer, Bose, Condé Nast, Toyota and Johnson & Johnson, is enjoying another time in the sun, after […]

CANNES — Talking about the imperative to deliver and measure ads across platforms is one thing, doing it is another. Digital video ad-tech outfit FreeWheel says it sees a “tipping point” coming after the recent US TV upfronts season saw a range of new formats and techniques debut. But it is already seeing a march from traditional desktop internet […]

CANNES — Digital data, and the ability to harness it to better target advertising messages, is one of the greatest transformational forces in marketing. But the zeal with which executives are embracing the transformation reads like a menu of enthusiasm. Slavi Samardzija, global CEO of Annalect, the New York-based data analytics consulting and technology company for marketers, says: […]

It is a tremendous new advertising opportunity – but agencies are going to have to think a little differently if they want to get results from using video advertising on Facebook. That’s the message the social network itself has been pushing out to agencies in the last few months, and agencies appear to be getting the […]

CANNES — After Outbrain, Taboola, ShareThrough and other native advertising technology offerings, comes Plista. That is the German native ad tech company acquired by GroupM two years ago. Since then, the agency’s Xaxis unit has been deploying native ad formats around the world, following recent launches in Russia, China and the US. “Bringing it to the […]

By her own employer’s admission, Susan Credle is a real-life “Peggy Olson”. By all accounts, the global chief creative officer of FCB’s career bears more than a passing resemblance to that of the fictional Mad Men character, once rising from the bottom of BBDO to become its creative chief. “They said ‘we’ll pay you $11,500 to fill in […]

CANNES — Is ad blocking theft? To publishers and advertisers who each depend on ads for income, consumers ripping out those ads can represent a kind of daylight robbery. But the new accusation of “theft” is harsh, and forgets that companies are also robbing from the very users they hope to reach, says one ad tech […]

CANNES — In the old days of advertising, measuring audience was imprecise, but at least it was straightforward. Nowadays, measuring across media channels, and understanding consumers holistically across each, is a huge challenge. But it’s one that might have been advanced quicker, a panel of marketers discussed during the Cannes Lions festival. “The biggest challenge is […]

CANNES — Once, it was a one-to-many medium. But TV is being rebooted. As consumers connect a new wave TV boxes to the internet, the screen in the living room begins benefitting from all the things internet-connected devices have been able to do for the last 20 years. And marketers are getting excited, because targeted advertising […]

CANNES — It has spent the last couple of years up-ending, shaking up and revolutionizing the buying and selling of advertising – all without, it sometimes seems, the industry ever agreeing what it really means. But could “programmatic” advertising now be waning? After a year in which executives have begun to apologetically refer to “the […]