Robert Andrews

FORT LAUDERDALE — In November, video ad tech vendor TubeMogul unveiled software to let marketers plan their video and TV ad campaigns. In future, it aims to give users more control over the tool. The tool “will ultimately be self-service”, the company’s TV strategy senior director Oscar Rondon tells this Beet.TV panel discussion. “If you […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — Until now, effectively measuring digitally-bought video and TV ads has to discover true effectiveness has been a bit of a problem – but that’s set to change, according to US TV channel operator A+E Networks‘ digital analytics VP Lee Boykoff. “There was a mature measurement system in place for TV. As we moved into mobile […]

LONDON — Smart TV sales revenue in Europe jumped 10.2% last year, according to GFU Connections for those TVs have historically been patchy, but now the market looks like picking up. “OTT has been a little behind in Europe than it has in the U.S., primarily because the activation of consumers has been a little slower,” according […]

LONDON — European satellite operator, channel owner and telco Sky is celebrating two years of growth in its pioneering addressable TV advertising platform, AdSmart. Deputy MD Jamie West tells Beet.TV the service, which allows advertisers to target individual household set-top boxes using more than 532 attributes held by Sky about its customers, has clocked up 700 advertisers, 4,000 […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — New York cable TV company Cablevision‘s Total Audience has been making waves for allowing ad deals to benefit from super precision. But getting there hasn’t been a walk in the park. “Once the sales reps see incremental sales revenue … they become converts. But bringing the horse to water required a lot of time […]

LONDON — God forbid the idea that marketers are not sentient. But sentience is also coming to the world of automated advertising, in the shape of artificial intelligence. That’s the name of a book, Sentience, released by Omnicom agency PHD earlier this year. “Anybody in marketing needs to understand a bit about AI,” says PHD‘s worldwide CEO Mike Cooper. […]

LONDON — Leading UK satcaster, telco and channel operator Sky has used FreeWheel for the last few years, to manage its digital video ad inventory. Now it will deploy the company’s platforms more widely, as it begins to consolidate its operations across Europe. The former BSkyB of the UK completed a £7bn merger with its sister companies in […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — Fragmented content consumption has given rise to platforms that help advertisers and buyers aiming to put measurement back together. The only problem? They’re fragmented, too! Does any of this matter? Some marketers are becoming excited about the prospect of unifying ad measurements in to a single, holistic metric. But is that feasible? An entertaining panel convened at […]

It’s been a big year for brand marketers. With a reported $25 billion set to change hands as agency accounts came up for renewal, this year was both a threat and an opportunity. In truth, so-called “Pitchapalooza” has been about more than just beauty contests for contract renewal – it’s also about establishing which agencies have digital chops […]

LONDON — One theory holds that super-targeted and automated online ads can most benefit companies that sell products, because campaign outcomes can be tracked all the way through to purchase. But that doesn’t have to mean mere product manufacturers – which, traditionally, rely on someone else to sell their stuff – have to be left out, says Candice Odhams, EMEA […]

LONDON — We are working in an age where technology seems to make everything possible – from uncovering the ad views that never happened, to producing the ultimate, all-encompassing metric for advertising experienced across screen types. But is the industry too busy debating the potential, complex future measurement systems to notice that they are already here? “I […]

LONDON — The organization charged with measuring UK TV viewing for channels’ advertisers, Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), used to be critized for its traditionalist approach to the task – a 5,1oo-household panel method supposed to represent country-wide viewing in a multi-media age. But BARB is reinventing itself. The organisation already measures consumers’ digital viewing of core broadcasters’ shows, […]

LONDON — Respected UK public broadcaster Channel 4 may be a public broadcaster – but, unlike the BBC, it still has to raise its own funds commercially. So, the company is hoping its coming-soon PVX programmatic video trading platform will give it a foundation to reap more of the money coming in to programmatic. Announced in November […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — It’s one of the major ad tech vendors promising to define the emerging video advertising space. But what is going on at Videology lately? The way North America MD Tim Castree describes, Videology is a little bit like geology… “Sand — How we can use our Nielsen and Rentrak data to score television […]

LONDON — Newspaper and TV companies are natural cut-throat rivals. But, in a new global context, publishers in many markets are tapping their common cause – and common tongue – to fight a shared enemy. Earlier this year, The Guardian, CNN International, the Financial Times and Reuters together formed the Pangea Alliance, a shared scheme to pool first-party ad […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — The ability to target individual TV sets with custom advertising is real and it’s here – but you’re going to have to wait a couple more years before it gets really real. With deployments from Cablevision, Comcast, DirecTV and DISH Networks, the number of targetable TV sets is growing but, lately, we have heard still-optimistic executives sound […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — The US pay-TV providers with which many ad tech vendors partner, have access to just two minutes per hour of ad time in local programming. But the US TV system is an outlier in a global context. Smaller, more integrated national systems in other countries seem to make partnering for programmatic or addressable initiatives […]

LONDON — All marketers these days want to deliver ads across as many screens as consumers have available to them. Doing so is increasingly easy, thanks to a growing plethora of advertising technology. But measuring the impact of those deliveries remains a thorny problem. Tantalized by the possibilities, some in the industry are dreaming of […]

LONDON — The ad world is only just getting its head around the technology-driven ability to super-target ads at human beings. But, pretty soon, it may need to focus its attention on those humans’ personal assistant software, a leading ad exec says. Omnicom’s PHD worldwide CEO Mike Cooper says the emergence of virtual personal assistants – […]

LONDON — They both received investment from the big German TV group RTL, now video ad tech companies Clypd and SpotX are set to solidify their partnership even further under the same stable. Already this year, the pair told Beet.TV they would team up, after RTL’s $144m investment in to SpotX in 2014 and $19.4m in Clypd this […]