Robert Andrews

For anyone who thought mobile ad blocking was a minority sport, last week’s new PageFair report about ad blocking on the mobile web was a shot across the bow. Drawing from a range of data sources, it claimed 22% of smartphone users globally are blocking mobile web ads, the vast majority using mobile browsers that block by […]

If you believe the oft-quoted PageFair data, 198 million around the world use ad blocking software, while 22% of smartphone users are even now blocking mobile web browser ads. Industry figures often advocate “better ads” as a solution to the problem. But the truth is, bloated and intrusive web pages drag on load times and weigh […]

LONDON — After revolutionizing online display and digital video ad sales, many expect so-called “programmatic” technology to shake-up the TV advertising industry, too. Even a sliver of the $79bn US TV ad industry would be worth a small fortune. But indusstry opinion appears divided on whether “programmatic TV” will take off any time soon. However, two […]

LONDON — Sky, the UK’s leading pay-TV platform is hoping to add more ad-tech services partnerships to a recent raft of deals, as it looks to expand on the effectiveness of its TV ad targeting and multi-screen ad sequencing technologies against the rise of online rivals. The satellite TV company’s own addressable TV offering, Sky AdSmart, has been live in the market […]

LONDON — The last couple of decades have been marked out by a rapid focus on digital media business models. Now digital is joining up with other media channels. But Mike Baker wants them all to blend together entirely. “The digital migration is not complete until it disappears,” says Baker, chief of DataXu, an ad-tech vendor bringing data science […]

LONDON — “Programmatic” ad trading technology emerged in to this world in the form of real-time bidding for ad spaces, on open, auction-based exchanges. So it’s a good job, for anyone vying for a piece of the TV ad industry pie, that times have changed. After all, that kind of ad buying system is anathema […]

LONDON — When buyers can successfully identify which ad impressions are really viewable, how will ad pricing change? For one thing, publishers are going to work a lot harder, according to one measurement exec. “Viewability has become the conduit for identifying, at least, some really good quality traffic that does the work,” says comScore advertising SVP […]

LONDON — Invidi should know a thing or two about the new science of addressable advertising. After all, the company was formed in 2000, and has been allowing advertisers to serve distinct ads to individual households ever since. Now it’s ready to close the loop back from TV to online media, too. Company chief marketer Fred Di […]

LONDON —  The recent acquisition of   SSP StickyADS.tv marks a global expansion of the company’s programmatic  TV offering, explains Thomas Bremond, managing director FreeWheel in the EU, in this interview with Beet.TV He explains that FreeWheel works with some 90 percent of U.S. broadcasters and operators.  And, the company is well entrenched in the U.K. […]

After Outbrain, Taboola, ShareThrough and other native advertising technology offerings, comes Plista. That is the German native ad tech company acquired by Group M two years ago. Since then, the agency’s Xaxis unit has been deploying native ad formats around the world. Now it is finally set to be deployed in the US. “We look forward to launching […]

LONDON — Many marketers have heard the phrase: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” But Vodafone is trying to find the answer and eliminate the waste, using an exploratory attitude and with an ad-tech vendor in-tow. In this video interview, Vodafone head of brand strategy, […]

LONDON — Marketers have always regarded television as the big box that can reach a mass audience, the medium at the top of the funnel that fuels initial consumer awareness. But times are a-changing, and new technology means targeted television can serve advertisers just like laser-guided online ads can. “TV can absolutely be a performance medium,” according to […]

LONDON — The excitement in ad-land is all about the eventual appearance of “programmatic” advertising technology, which has already revolutionized online display and video ad sales, in to the $75 billion traditional television industry. But Caspar Schlickum doesn’t quite see it that way. While many tech vendors get excited about converting TV in to another programmatic video end point, […]

LONDON — Two years after it launched, UK satellite TV operator Sky’s addressable TV technology has hit some milestones. The AdSmart system was a long time coming, but has already begun to change change the market. Amongst the numbers, head Graeme Hutcheson revealed at a Beet.TV recorded panel: 5,000 campaigns placed to date. almost 1,000 advertisers so far. […]

The threats are mounting. With challenges like viewability, fraud and ad blocking rising, the online ad industry could risk falling, just as Rome’s empire did before it. That’s the view of Terence Kawaja, the famed digital media M&A advisor, whose just-released 100-slide deck, inspired by Netflix’s House Of Cards, lays the industry bare. http://www.slideshare.net/tkawaja/lumas-state-of-digital-media-at-dms-16 As Kawaja tells Beet.TV, Scape Of Cards: State […]

The video ad-tech roll-up continued this month, as Comcast-owned premium video ad-tech vendor FreeWheel announced it was acquiring France-based server-side platform (SSP) StickyADS. StickyADS offers premium publishers software to build, run and operate their own private exchange. So why did FreeWheel buy? “We knew we had to become a full-stack provider to enable our clients to […]

SEVILLE — By now, people know all about ad retargeting – the practice through which ads for products you have viewed online follow you around the web. But what if those products followed you out of a store, through the shopping mall and in your car home after a visit to your local shop? That’s what Bannerconnect […]

SEVILLE — Back in February, the remnants of MySpace ended up located at Time Inc,when the publisher acquired Viant, the advertising data company that was the latest owner of the once-mighty social network. But Time’s interest was about more than social. It was buying Viant because of its considerable bank of first-party data about consumers, also including in […]

If Taboola wanted to show the industry the scale it has amassed, it is certainly now using some very big numbers to do so – comScore Media Trend data it republished today suggests the content discovery tech vendor is becoming gargantuan. 200m+ mobile-only and 810m+ desktop users, totalling more than 1b monthly users. “Every American internet user sees Taboola […]

SEVILLE — When comScore launched in the 1990s, it began measuring consumers’ internet browsing habits by installing a software monitor on their PC. Times have changed. A lot. With devices proliferating, online life is no longer about the computer in the study – so comScore is making a move to capture everything, with a new product […]