Robert Andrews

CANNES –  With numbers this big, it’s no wonder ad-tech vendors re vying to turn even the traditional media space programmatic. “Worldwide, (advertising) is $170bn, in the US it’s $77bn,” according to Herve Brunet, CEO and co-founder of StickyADS, one TV ad-tech vendor recently acquired by another. “The linear side of TV is eventually going to […]

CANNES — The advertising technology industry is now replete with metrics and currencies. What if there was another one added to the mix? The chief of a programmatic firm acquired by Group M’s Xaxis division is advocating a switch of focus. “We (as an industry) have been talking a lot about performance metrics and if people […]

CANNES — Twelve months after it launched an ability for advertisers to introduce custom logic to ad buying, AppNexus claims 25 clients are using the tool. Last year, the ad-tech platform bowed AppNexus Programmable Bidder (APB), a way for buyers to connect with AppNexus via API. One part of that was Bonsai –  a way to let  advertisers “decide […]

CANNES — One of the hottest topics in advertising right now is dynamic creative – the ability to tailor not just the buying of inventory in real-time, but the message served in the ad, too. Numerous software vendors are now offering ad buyers variants of this customization, and Group M’s Xaxis says it can be pretty […]

CANNES — Across the industry, ad execs are coming to realize that integrating brand messages in to content could lead to better impacts, could even save an ad industry that is fast becoming concerned about a consumer revolt. Native advertising is becoming big business, and product placement is growing bigger than ever. The only problem? Developing an industry-wide […]

CANNES — Two watchwords were on the lips of most advertising execs who gathered at the Cannes Lions festival this year. One was “authenticity“. The other, “transparency”. Across the industry, advertisers – alarmed by the revelation that many ad views are invoked without a real human audience – are aiming for full visibility of audience […]

CANNES — The tech industry sure does like to trump up certain software as the next big thing. All the while, the advertising industry, too, has been worrying that certain technological developments could cause it the mother of all headaches. So, what’s the truth – and which of the recent trends are overblown? On a panel of […]

Advertising is changing faster, perhaps, than it ever has. Today, new platforms offer a new creative palette for agencies to make messages – and new challenges present limitations on their scope. Underneath all that change, however, lays the kernel of the same, enduring construct – storytelling. That’s according to an agency creative who has devised campaigns for […]

As they approach Facebook for clients, it would be easy for a lazy agency to simply re-trot the creative assets they had already produced for legacy media or other digital outlets. But that would be missing the point – new channels demand new approaches, and new approaches reward creatives, according to one advertising leader. “Every time they […]

CANNES — One screen good, two screens better… but, in households with multiple people and multiple devices, how are advertisers and content owners supposed to understand consumption anymore? That’s where media measurement agencies come in – and that’s why digital measurer comScore agreed to merge with TV mesaurement firm Rentrak last year. The outcome – a combined […]

CANNES — A couple of years back, video ad-tech outfit Ooyala acquired peer Videoplaza to combine geographic footprints and technological capabilities in a single company. Now the joined-up outfit is going to market. “We have invested in the ad-tech business since acquiring Videoplaza a couple of years ago,” Ooyala programmatic GM Scott Braley tells Beet.TV on the company’s first […]

CANNES — If you Google “ad agency disintermediation“, you won’t fail to see the debate. With countless advertising and marketing technology platforms now on offer to help brands plan, buy and understand their communications, people are starting to wonder – is the ad agency over? In other words, will clients begin to run more of their own […]

CANNES — Facebook’s announcement on Wednesday, in which it said it would prioritize updates from users’ friends and family over those from news organizations, has caused a shudder in media land. Many publishers have spent the last few years locked in a pattern to acquire social followers, and to distribute content on social platforms, in the hope of […]

CANNES — TV ads targeted at individual households may be more expensive than those traditionally delivered en masse – but extra data that closes the loop between ad spend and sales lift will make things cost-effective in the long run. That’s according to a comScore TV chief. comScore national TV EVP Chris Wilson says his media measurement company […]

CANNES — To license fee-payers in the UK, the idea that the BBC could run ads at all – let alone sponsored content – is anathema to the service. But that’s the UK. Beyond the border, BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, is charged with raising revenue from advertising. Last year, branded content, through its new BBC […]

CANNES — The emergence of an ad format that can bring more video advertising, even where there was no video content, heralds a new era of business, according to an executive in the ad-tech space. Video advertising platform Videology’s chief commercial officer Ryan Jamboretz is talking about “outstream”, the format which inserts auto-playing video ads between […]

CANNES — The advertising industry is in a kind of crisis. Around the world, repeat surveys indicating high and growing use of ad blocking software are spooking the media industry. Marketing agency Havas Media Group is amongst those wary of the new reality. “Advertising is less and less acceptable for many consumers,” Havas Media Group global MD […]

You may think that the rules governing creativity for distinct, mature media – once codified – are set. Truth is, everything is in a state of evolution and flux, and creative agencies must adapt to whatever works next. Once upon a time, early cinema, for example, relied on a single tracking shot – then the notion of […]

CANNES — Why hire one yacht at Cannes Lions when you can hire two? Daily Mail’s MailOnline is surging – the site is a behemoth in traffic terms, fuelled mostly by advertising. That’s why MailOnline moored its yachts in the harbour during the advertising festival this month, to meet and greet brand partners. But MailOnline chief operating officer Rich Caccappolo […]

CANNES — WPP-owned data-driven audience-buying platform Xaxis is growing fast. Launched five years ago, the outfit is now going in to overdrive. The company has grown from fewer than 100 to more than 1,500 employees, to more than 3,000 brand customers and more than $1bn in revenue, 15% of which comes from outside WPP and its Group […]