Robert Andrews

LAS VEGAS — Video, video everywhere. Montreal-based Haivision started life a decade ago helping video owners encode their content; now it wants to help them organize the plethora of videos that have been digitized. “For the last 10 years, we’ve been focused on helping people distribute assets across the internet; now we’re all about managing those […]

After two decades with the world’s largest ad media company by billings, the man they call “the king of advertising” is still hungry, still changing. Good job – advertising is about to change, a lot. “If someone were to watch me in any given day, I still read scripts from television shows, I still make calls on […]

LAS VEGAS — This time last year, Cisco unveiled Videoscape Virtualized Video Processing (V2P), a set of technologies allowing video workers to process their material using virtual, or cloud, services. Now it says it has improved the offering, after feedback received from customers. Cisco service provider video marketing director David Yates says improvements are threefold – “multi-vendor” integration, more virtualized […]

LAS VEGAS — Microsoft has used the NAB Show to announce it is expanding its video services suite, including a new video player that speaks fluent HTML5 as well as other standards. Azure Media Services is getting a new video player and transcoding that will take place in the cloud. “(Azure Media Player) does automatic device detection and […]

LAS VEGAS — The next-generation format for video compression has grown fast over the last couple of years, with adoption from names including Google’s YouTube, Microsoft’s Azure, Adobe Primetime and Akamai. Support for live ad insertion, digital rights management and the HEVC standard was added recently, and European internet TV standard HbbTV just just moved up to version […]

Call it alchemy, call it a meeting of minds, but marrying up seemingly-disparate disciplines it the key to unlocking business growth. So says one of the leaders of cross-disciplinary media consultancy MediaLink. “Partnership is what makes this world go around,” according to CEO Michael Kassan. “You need people who are growing toward the same goals. One shop does not fit all […]

Brand TV advertising these days is something of a scattergun approach – you pay to reach large audiences, but you can’t guarantee the distribution will really achieve the desired result. Increasingly emboldened by the guarantees that are offered by online advertising, some TV ad buyers are calling for an improvement. And that is what former Tacoda head honcho Dave Morgan‘s current […]

Many advertisers don’t believe there is sufficient high-quality video content out there on which to advertise. So SpotXchange, an ad tech platform serving video advertisers, is offering to help publishers increase their video output, without having to produce video of their own. The company is connecting with VideoElephant of Dublin, a library of professionally-produced video material that […]

We hear a lot about data science in advertising nowadays. But Gian Fulgoni may have been the trade’s original “Maths Man”. At university, he studied for a physics degree first and a masters in marketing second. That fusion eventually saw Fulgoni lead IRI, the first major supplier of point-of-sale scanner information to the consumer goods industry, in the 80s and […]

Sometimes, it takes a former reporter to tell you straight. Even if you don’t like the sound of what Randall Rothenberg has to say, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) president and CEO has a sharp and timely view from his vantage point at the top of the online ad industry. That view – you may see the […]

As more and more brands, using empowering new ad tech and marketing software, begin to perform some of the functions of their media agencies, what will be the impact on those agencies? “I frankly don’t know,” ad company GroupM’s chairman Irwin Gotlieb tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Most agencies were truly agents on behalf of a client. […]

AUSTIN – Facebook wants to make a big splash in the world of video advertising. But failings in its offering mean it still has a way to go, according to a leading ad agency boss. “The advertiser is competing with the regular newsfeed and the rest of the user-generated newsfeed. It remains a challenging environment,” GroupM chief digital officer Rob Norman […]

SourceKnowledge has made waves in the Canadian ad tech market for its mobile video ad demand-side platform and exchange. Now the company is shaking up the way it does business with advertisers. We’re looking to start providing a narrative approach to working with commerce sites, SourceKnowledge president Patrick Hopf tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We’re looking to become a […]

AUSTIN — Last October, ad agency Leo Burnett and online publisher Huffington Post announced they would be partnering to help create content for brands. One of many initiatives in which publishers are working to do so for brands, this partnership is different from most, in that Huffington Post staff are embedded with the ad agency for at least part […]

AUSTIN — Mobile banner ad sales are booming. But they are not necessarily the ad format that is going to inspire and engage consumers most on the small screen. Ad tech supplier Kargo is betting on giving advertisers and publishers something different, eschewing performance-driven banner sales for high-touch brand campaign placements. Founder and CEO Harry Kargman tells […]

AUSTIN — Videology sees its recently-inked integration deal Comcast-owned ad tech platform FreeWheel as “bridging the gap” until true programmatic TV advertising might finally be enabled. Last month, the pair announced video ad tech vendor Videology would plug in to FreeWheel to help advertisers buy video inventory programmatically on publisher sites through its FourFronts program, an extension of its private marketplace. […]

AUSTIN — If you think you haven’t seen much evidence of location beacons’ use in a marketing context, following initial hype, you soon will. That’s according to one agency mobile marketing leader. “Apple just rolled out the Beacon API last year,” MEC Global’s north America lead for mobile and emerging technologies, Rachel Pasqua, tells Beet.TV in this […]

AUSTIN — Media agency Horizon Media doesn’t think true programmatic ad buying is coming to television any time soon – but that isn’t stopping it from trying out some of programmatic’s techniques to understand ad targeting better nevertheless. Horizon Media national TV SVP David Campanelli tells Beet.TV the company is using ad tech vendor Rovi’s Ad […]

AUSTIN — Over the years, when most people have talked about The Economist’s online strategy, discussion has centered around its access model. Right now, that is three free articles a week – but this is not the only horse the publisher has in the race. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is also busy producing premium research and […]

AUSTIN — The online advertising world is fast moving from the medium screen to the small one. As it does, it can nevertheless recapture some of the advertising benefits boasted by the TV before them, says a mobile ad tech boss. “Mobile is now the first screen,” Opera Mediaworks CEO Mahi de Silva tells Beet.TV in this video […]