Robert Andrews

MIAMI – The great video ad-tech consolidation wave is continuing, with a twist.  AT&T and DISH have announced plans to acquire addressable TV ad-tech vendor INVIDI. But they are not doing it alone – the pair are joined in the deal by fellow acquirer WPP, the world’s largest ad agency holding group, though it is AT&T […]

MIAMI — “Multi-screen”, “converged”, “transmedia”, or “platform-neutral”? The number of ways you could describe the new challenge of reaching consumers across multiple devices is mindboggling. But one word is inarguable – “complex”. That’s why the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video, a collection of video providers advocating alongside the video ad-tech vendor, is aiming to stitch back together […]

MIAMI — TV is changing, and advertising with it. As TV services light up with internet connectivity, so, too, does the promise of serving individually-targeted ads to TV, in the same way as they already are online. Just don’t expect that prospect to go large any time soon. “There’s a lot of experimentation going on […]

MIAMI — Big brands are used to using mass media to reach mass audiences. Now that they can use the same media to reach tightly-defined ones – like individual TV-viewing households – they are having to learn new tricks. “The juggling act between scale and targetability is the fulcrum that we have to juggle,” says MasterCard’s media […]

BOSTON — If data is “the new oil”, it pays not to spill any. But publishers are too readily emptying the can over to middlemen who are taking its value for themselves. That’s according to one boss whose position at the top of a programmatic video ad platform has led him to conclude publishers need to […]

MIAMI — That Lumascape is a pretty mess. In other words, customers like the new super-powers bestowed on them by ad-tech – but they are confused by a procession of vendors that all claim to do the same thing. That’s why Dan Bruinsma is looking forward to the kind of consolidation heralded by the latest big ad-tech M&A […]

MIAMI — The auto industry is a pretty specific one. Despite the end products being badged by just a handful of marques, it is individual local dealers, and not the brands themselves, with whom customers end up transacting. Not only that. Despite copious research being carried out online, most purchases are overwhelmingly still made on the forecourt, […]

BOSTON — We’ve had pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll, in- and out-stream. But what if the future of video advertising lay more closely at the heart of the media that carry it? That is what’s on the mind of Alex Drosin, President, North America, of Massive Interactive, a tech company helping build mobile and TV apps for TV operators […]

BOSTON — If you think paying $100 a month for a mega suite of 500 channels, most of which you never watch, is overkill, you’re not alone. That’s why we are seeing the rise of the so-called “skinny bundle”, a cut-down cable package which operators hope can reduce cord cutting. But Tom Morgan sees the […]

It started as a simple tool to upload videos to multiple services. But now TubeMogul is becoming the latest addition to Adobe’s media technology stack. The Emeryville, CA-based company has just confirmed an agreement to be acquired by the digital media powerhouse for $540m. What does Adobe want with TubeMogul? According to its announcement: “Adobe’s acquisition of […]

CHICAGO – In this fast-moving industry, it can be easy to keep your head down, obsess over the latest media metrics, and not really look up to see the bigger picture in life. But life forced Tracey Scheppach to do just that, when her son Ryan, then aged just seven, was diagnosed with leukemia. The next […]

Together, they helped pioneer Cablevision’s approach to next-generation TV advertising. Now executives Kristin Dolan and Ben Tatta have left to form their own company providing set-top box data to marketers. The move comes after Dolan’s Dolan Family Ventures acquired the existing Analytics Media Group (AMG), a data analytics firm with a background in politics, to immediately […]

So-called addressable TV is lighting the way for new brands toward a kind of future TV advertising that is customized and targeted at individual households. That’s bringing in new, smaller advertisers for which TV may previously have been too costly. But one surprising new group of buyers is those from overseas. At Cadreon, IPG Mediabrands’ ad-tech unit, […]

Around the world, TVs are getting connected to the internet. And that means big new possibilities for the ways in which advertisers can reach viewers. For one, internet targeting capabilities support the delivery of individual ads tailored to specific households. It’s a theory that was a long time coming, but now the reality is hitting. […]

The masses are coming. The online masses consuming TV through all manner of internet-connected devices, that is. All of a sudden, TV isn’t what it used to be. And neither will TV advertising be. The ability to target individual viewers may signal the death knell for a sector that has long sold its spots on loose, […]

The opportunity to deliver customised TV ads tailored to individual households is new and fast emerging, and you could scarcely pick a better exemplar for the discipline than an election. Fortunately, an election is happening right now. And addressable TV has been used by candidates to deliver messages in key states, tailored to individual homes with target voters. “The […]

ORLANDO – Advertisers are cottoning on to one of modern marketing’s key challenges – how to address a customer nowadays when they leave different pieces of themselves on different devices? The solution lays in combining data sets in to a single customer “identity” profile. But, already, that discipline is transforming in to more than just combining and […]

ORLANDO — The corporate media world may be stuck in pending regulatory approval of AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner. But that isn’t stopping Time Warner’s Turner from pressing ahead in to the future of advertising. Turner is fresh from winning ANA Genius Award for analytics science, as it looks to innovate on how advertisers can […]

ORLANDO — Earlier this summer, Hulu began offering interactive digital ads made for the TV screen, when viewers watch through gadgets like Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire Stick and games consoles. The agency involved in those ads is Havas, but the technology outfit enabling them is BrightLine. Now BrightLine says it will build on the […]

Web users don’t like too many ads, and TV viewers may feel the same way, too. That’s why, last October, Turner made a big announcement that it would reduce the ad load in some of its TV broadcasts. One year on, how is the initiative faring? Donna Speciale, Turner Ad Sales’ president, tells Beet.TV the early results are exploratory […]