Robert Andrews

FORT LAUDERDALE — The advertising industry is going through enormous change. The internet has been fragmenting consumer behavior, taking analog ad dollars and now it is promising to overhaul TV. Sometimes, things are moving too fast. But, standing back to take a look, Furious Corp CEO Ashley J. Swartz says 2016 will bring a “reverence” that everyone […]

In the last couple of years, private ad trading marketplaces have given ad sellers the efficiencies offered by programmatic trading technology, but by ringfencing premium inventory off from open-market fodder. Now ad tech platform vendor OpenX is launching its take on the concept to offer a best-of-both approach of its own. Its “real-time guaranteed” technology (RTG) […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — Although the advertising industry spent last year assessing ad tech vendor claims that addressable TV was ready for prime-time, things seemed to have settled in to a consensus in which many now realize the reality of wholesale change is not yet imminent. Ad agency SMG has already reported a tripling in client addressable […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — Shareholders of comScore and Rentrak are due to vote on a merger of the two companies, via the former’s proposed acquisition of the latter, on Thursday, in a move that will be a big deal for the advertising and content measurement industry. The pair plan to combine to pool comScore’s online analytics nous with […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — When many vendors think about the emerging technology “dynamic ad insertion” (DAI), they think about ads inserted, on the fly, in to live programming playing out through digital media. But what’s dynamic can also me added to what is static. New York cable operator Cablevision is eyeing up the application of dynamic ads […]

LONDON — In the digital media ecosystem, disintermediation lurks around every corner. With so much of the advertising industry in flux, it is easy for an incumbent player to be dislodged by market forces. European satellite operator, channel owner and telco Sky is fighting against that tide when it comes to next-generation advertising, launching an analytics suite for its […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — Cars have proved that addressable TV advertising can work, now credit cards are ready to attest to its efficiency. The new concept means brands can advertise only to relevant segments of TV viewers, targeted at the household level, cutting out wasted spend. Joanna Thissen, targeted TV division at Modi Media, Group M’s division working […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — “Addressable TV”, the practice of targeting individual households’ TV sets based on data characteristics, may have been the hot industry topic of 2015 – but Invidi, the Princeton, NJ-based ad tech vendor enabling broadcast operators with the technology, has already been doing so for 14 years now. The company already has traction, […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — A year ago, only 15% of US senior ad buyers reported using programmatic for TV ads, according to a survey. Herein lays the contradiction of this much-hyped technology – many are tantalized by the possibilities of super-targeting TV advertising and automating their trading, but the promise is not yet fully a reality. “Everyone proclaimed that […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks – but that’s exactly what is going to happen in media, as old-fashioned linear TV begins learning some of the ad targeting tactics digital advertisers have long enjoyed. That change is happening because, as TVs or TV boxes get connected to the internet and […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — The world of advertising technology is opening up impressive prospects for ever more refined targeting of TV and video audiences. That is what we cover regularly here on Beet.TV, and that is the trend seen by Ashish Chordia, CEO of Alphonso, an ad tech company helping advertisers harness device data to target […]

LAS VEGAS — Historically, Hollywood has fought P2P piracy with legal action. But what if studios and channel operators could solve the download problem with advertising? That’s what TruOptik thinks could happen. The Stamford, CT, company’s technology employs “census-level measurement of peer-to-peer file sharing across the BitTorrent protocol” to create “the largest, IP-based non-cookie-reliant data set of entertainment […]

LAS VEGAS — Many web publishers have made a great business – and a big audience – out of online video. Now, could the last mile may be taking that video to the big screen in the living room? Xumo hopes so. The joint venture between Panasonic and MySpace’s latest owner, Viant, is a software layer for […]

FORT LAUDERDALE — Some media companies, especially the smaller ones, just don’t have the kind of scaled inventory many advertisers are looking for. So Operative, an ad tech platform operator which lets publishers manage their online ad space, is encouraging some of its customers to pool their slots. The outfit says it is launching a program called “partner […]

LONDON — European satellite operator, channel owner and telco Sky has been pioneering the cross-over of digital media and TV ad sales these last couple of years, notably launching Sky AdSmart, its addressable TV offering, allowing advertisers to target individual households. Then, in October, the company bowed AdVance, a suite knitting together data from across its many screens […]

LONDON — While analyst data continues to point to a downturn in TV activity and an up-tick in cord-cutting in the US, over in the UK television is barely in a death spiral at all. There are many reasons for that – for one, quality content and attractive online services are proving so popular that the BBC is […]

LONDON — This new year is expected to bring bigger developments in the enablement of buying TV ads with rapid decisioning, using programmatic technology. At least, that’s what ad agency SMG’s UK co-CEO Pippa Glucklich hopes. SMG’s use of addressable TV is taking off in the States. But that’s not the same in every market. “The UK […]

LAS VEGAS — With $25m raised in 2015, personalized video ad creation and delivery firm Innovid has now taken a total $56.m in venture funding over its eight years of operation. So what does the New York-based company plan to do with the latest money? “That new capital will help us fuel the growth,” co-founder Tal […]

LAS VEGAS — These days, consumers recognize silent auto-play is becoming a standard for videos delivered in feeds. But advertisers are still trying to find the true value in a format that nobody clicked and nobody heard. Ad holding group WPP’s chief Sir Martin Sorrell recently said Facebook, the biggest exponent of the format, “has a lot […]

LAS VEGAS — It was billed as a first, and a successful one at that. In October, Yahoo broadcast its first ever live stream of an NFL football game, the one  between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills from London. After the final whistle, Yahoo claimed to have broken ground by attracting 15m viewers. That would have made […]