Robert Andrews

CANNES — It’s not even a year since The New York Times, a stalwart of text publishing, bowed a virtual reality app for VR-enabled mobile phones, showcasing reporting in 360 degrees. Already, NYTVR has 600,000 users, a company executive tells Beet.TV. “We never could have imagined how big it would become,” said New York Times advertising and innovation […]

LONDON — It has been a spring and summer in which digital-native platforms have risen up, signing deals to carry live premium sport broadcasts. Twitter: First, there was the deal in which Twitter will share rights to air 10 Thursday-night NFL games, alongside NBC and CBS but on a global basis. YouTube: Then UK pay-TV challenge BT […]

Sure, ad agencies can try and sell stuff to consumers – but they can also change the whole world. That’s according to one agency creative chief watching a world of change open up new opportunities – for brands that are prepared to communicate honestly. “Never before has advertising been such a part of culture,” Arnold global chief creative […]

Once upon a time, in the age before feedback and media choice, advertisers could simply push out messaging without much regard to the viewpoints of viewers who were captive by default. All that has changed in an era when the consumer feedback loop has closed, and a warm reception by users is a prerequisite. “People […]

Ted Royer has travelled a lot. In his 20-year marketing career, the chief creative officer of independent ad network Droga5 has worked in Singapore, Argentina, Australia and finally New York City. How has marketing changed in that time? Marketing is no longer just about messages, it’s also about opinions, Royer tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “It’s not […]

CANNES — Programmatic is fine – but the programmatic revolution may already have happened. Next up? Back to storytelling. That’s what a growing number of advertising execs say. One of them is Iain Jacob, the Chief Executive Officer, EMEA for Publicis Media .”A lot of ad-tech to date has been about optimization, improving efficiencies and automation,” […]

CANNES — The growing visibility of online ad blocking, believed to be a response to excessive ad volume, is giving rise to advertiser worries about overly aggressive advertising across all media. Even TV is getting twitchy about viewers’ response to the way it programs advertising – something Discovery Communications ad sales EVP Sharon O’Sullivan says she has noticed. “With traditional […]

CANNES — By his own admission, the CEO of media buying agency PHD Worldwide says 2016 has been “pretty good to us” so far. The group has signed new contracts with Delta Airlines, Carnival cruises and recently won the business of the whole Volkswagen Group globally, having already worked for several of its sub-brands. Now at Cannes Lions, where his company is […]

CANNES — By now, many advertising buyers are getting used to outstream video – the technology that lets them place video ads on pages that don’t even carry video, between text paragraphs. By and large, those ads run on publisher sites. But Teads, one of several vendors behind the technology that supports outstream, doesn’t want to […]

He started out as a graduate graphic designer in South Africa – but, today, Chris Garbutt thinks the skills required to effectively portray a brand in the world go far beyond the visual. The global creative president of the big TBWA media agency says: “Brands need to ladder up to having a point of view in the […]

If the old age of advertising was about pushing sales messages to viewers, the current one is about involving them in conversations in which they end up really caring about the speaker or cause behind the message. That’s why the McCann agency operates with the mantra: “Creativity is the only way to survive.” It’s one Sean Bryan is on […]

CANNES — The sky is not falling, and TV is not dying. Despite the gloomy predictions of some digitally-focused observers, television still has a healthy life, and is complementing, not caving to, alternative channels. “A lot of people are saying that TV is dying,” says the ad agency group Omnicom Media Group‘s (OMG) Asia-Pacific CEO Cheuk […]

What should a brand be in 2016? “Authentic.” That’s the watchword everyone is using these days, and Omnicom’s OMD media agency is no different. As the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity got underway this week, OMD camped out at what it’s calling its “OMD Oasis“, a terrace on the Croisette where it will host more than […]

The great media thinker Marshall McLuhan once wrote: “Media come in pairs, with one acting as the “content” of the other, obscuring the operation of both.” In times of change, it is this which often means old-media content is rammed in to new media, like square pegs in a round hole. But now it’s time creatives […]

CANNES — The organizer of the increasingly large Cannes Lions festival, which got underway this weekend, has moved to allay rumors it may vacate its eponymous host by relocating to a rival city, by signing a decade-long deal with local politicians. The Lions’ 15,000 attendance swells the Cote D’Azur town’s 73,600 population every year, and is only getting larger, […]

For text-led news publishers, video has been the next big thing for a couple of decades now. Over the years, many have variously launched and shuttered newsroom video studios, alarmed by the cost of a foray in to moving-image. But video has become a quest for higher CPMs for many a publishers, and may finally be […]

With several companies having helped popularize the format, it is testament to the growing position of so-called “out-stream” video ads that there is now a supply-side ad platform (SSP) dedicated to them. ConvertMedia is that SSP, helping publishers deploy video ad units on text web pages and sell to buyers, in 15 different variants. Company chief revenue […]

Viewers don’t like too TV many ads. That’s the realization CNN owner Turner has come to, one of several media organizations now responding to negative consumer sentiment about the way content is funded. Turner’s solution – fewer, longer, better ads. That’s why, in October, it said it will halve the number of prime-time ads on […]

Even as Pandora expands its advertising offering to video, some ad agencies are starting to get excited about the new possibilities for advertising in digital audio. Sure, radio has existed for years. But Serial has ignited new interest for sponsoring podcasts, while new technology is promising programmatic-style ad-buying and targeting in streaming music and radio. While […]

LONDON — Invidi ha already helped US TV operators with customers in 68 million homes to deliver household-level targeted TV ads. Now it is aiming to expand its business overseas – but, first, it has to overcome some challenges. “We are expanding globally and aggressively, and are keeping most of those plans under wraps,” Invidi chief marketer […]