Robert Andrews

COLOGNE — Once upon a time, multi-platform proliferation meant “desktop, tablet and smartphone”. Now, we are entering an era when virtual worlds, connected toasters and even unmanned aerial vehicles represent new challenges and opportunities for brands. Neil Carty, innovation strategy SVP of marketing consulting agency MediaLink, calls all the new platforms “data exhausts”, emitting cues that marketers can better use to […]

COLOGNE – So-called “programmatic” methods of targeting or trading advertising may be typically associated with online media platforms – but that doesn’t mean something of the techniques can’t also be applied to linear TV. Indeed, programmatic looks like playing a part in the next TV upfront season beginning next spring, when networks will tout their upcoming shows to advertisers […]

LONG ISLAND, NY — They may not have dreamed it when they first formed a school magazine to cover a Glasgow suburb in the 1980s. But now The Drum‘s founders Gordon Young and Nick Creed are riding the wave of running one of the marketing industry’s most influential trade publications. After leaving school, the pair formed an early print trade […]

Time was, it was online delivery that required investment decisions and a strategic shift. But now, for broadcasters looking for efficiency and transformation in how to deliver live TV, online networks are the way to go. Thats according to Verizon Digital Media Services, a wing of the telco that offers CDN and live transmission services […]

COLOGNE — It’s no wonder MTG’s VOD service looks so slick. After all, the Swedish media company’s Play catch-up TV offering is based in Stockholm, whose digital designers have created brands like Spotify and beyond. Now MTG’s pan-Scandinavian, free Play is changing the way it monetizes the multi-platform application. “We’re transitioning that sale model from a direct sales […]

COLOGNE — When programmatic ad trading burst on to the scene, it was as a mechanism to allow real-time, automated buying of lower-value auction ads. But times are changing. In fact, the needs of broadcasters dictate as much. They don’t want to give up their inventory to lack of control and poor returns. So technology vendors […]

Pretty much the whole of the advertising technology world these days seems to focus around targeting. The better the targeting, the better the results, many people believe. So when the world’s largest advertising spender pulls back from targeted ads on one of the world’s largest ad platforms, people take notice. That’s what Procter & Gamble did this summer, […]

Just when you wrapped your head around “programmatic”, a new variant of the data-driven advertising technology is creeping on to the scene. In so-called “header bidding“, publishers offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges before alerting their ad servers, intending to garner multiple bids on the same inventory and so make higher prices. And, no sooner […]

What is one of the biggest database software companies doing at an advertising conference? Wandering amongst the brands, agencies and ad-tech vendors at the just-wrapped Advertising Week New York event, Beet.TV found Oracle, the massive seller of data products. Its strategic agency partnerships global head Vik Kathuria explains the logic of the attendance to Beet.TV: “Oracle have a pretty […]

After “Hey, Siri”, “Alexa” and “OK Google”, comes… The Weather Company, whose partnership with IBM aims to let audiences converse with brand ads using their voice or typed questions. Acquired its digital operation was acquired by Big Blue last year, the company this summer announced it would unveil “Watson Ads”, formats that tap IBM’s Watson AI system to […]

Nielsen is stepping up its game to measure up against its measurement rivals, launching a new product that aims to give content owners, and their advertisers, a single view of audience consumption across all platforms. Digital Content Ratings is the latest chapter in the group’s Total Audience Measurement roll-out. Why is Nielsen doing this? Product leadership […]

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 […]