Robert Andrews

When Apple brings iOS 9 out of beta on September 16, many in digital advertising fear the pillars of their kingdom could begin to crumble. For, the latest version of the mobile operating system includes a content blocking architecture that could allow developers to release ad-blocking extensions for download by users. Some in advertising are jumping to act. […]

These days, Tim Armstrong may be best known for running one of the world’s leading digital media businesses. But, two decades ago, when online media were just getting going, Armstrong made his first business foray by launching a print media business. It didn’t work out so well. In fact, the newspaper he launched with a friend, “Beginnings of Boston,” […]

He may have joined the company 44 years ago now, but Publicis’ advertising industry was just about the last one CEO Maurice Lévy had in mind when he was picking a career. “The reality is, I wanted to be a surgeon,” he confesses to Beet.TV in this video interview. “I just cannot stand blood, so I had to change. […]

Clypd, a television ad targeting optimization platform vendor, will soon unveil a new multi-screen advertising initiative resulting from its recent investment by European broadcast group RTL. Chief relationship officer Mark Mitchell tells Beet.TV, in this video interview, the company is working with SpotX, which just rebranded from SpotXchange. RTL invested $144m in SpotXchange in 2014 and $19.4m in […]

When “programmatic” advertising technology came on to the scene, it was first used to sell ad inventory that didn’t otherwise manage to sell via traditional, human methods. But that is changing, says one ad tech vendor. SpotX platform and global supply SVP Sean Buckley says “programmatic” and “direct” sales channels are coming together. “We’re starting to […]

In the narrative of media evolution, what was once new becomes old and, ultimately, becomes obsolete. But vinyl music is enjoying a bounce – so what chance a return for other media formats? “I’m seeing people beginning to pick up formats that were considered dead and reimagine them,” says Susan Lyne, the veteran media executive who […]

Riding the crest of a wave is a pretty good feeling. But the bigger lessons can come from falling off and hitting the bottom. Many a business guru is fond of the ironic value of failure. That’s a notion that the boss of one of the biggest ad groups subscribes to, too. “I’ve always learned more from […]

Why did you get in to advertising? For Brian Lesser, it was because his dad showed him the ropes. Now Lesser runs WPP-owned Xaxis, one of the technology companies helping make advertising more targeted and more relevant. “When I was a kid, my father ran advertising agencies … I always liked the commercials better than the […]

Through the eyes of a US marketing exec, Europeans are, notoriously, relatively more concerned about how ad targeting might impinge on their personal data. A recent report from Belgium’s data protection agency claimed Facebook tracks computers of users without their consent, whether they are logged in to Facebook or not, and even if they are […]

The old adage used to be that digital video had to be short, that viewers wouldn’t sit and watch it in long sessions. That may have been true on the desktop – but video ad tech company FreeWheel’s latest quarterly market report shows new devices are now driving online video ever more toward long-form and live […]

The data continues to point to a disconnect – consumers have flocked to consume content and engage socially using mobile devices, over desktop alternatives. So why have advertisers still not piled in to mobile at the same rate? “It’s sometimes an afterthought,” IPG Mediabrands global mobile head Travis Johnson agrees, in this video interview with Beet.TV “We’ve got clients […]

Through January to October 2014, the total value of ad tech deals totalled $3.8 billion, according to a report from investment bank Coady Diemar Partners at the time. And things are about to get bigger. Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of media M&A advisory LUMA Partners, says his firm is advising on several deals, due to be announced this year, […]

It’s four years since ad tech company AppNexus first tried helping advertisers tackle targeted ad buying on digital video, an attempt it later aborted. But now the New York-based outfit is ready to reboot its video plan. AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley, in this video interview with Beet.TV, says:  “We’re going in to open beta for our new video-buying […]

We may not yet have reached the point at which so-called “addressable TV”, the ability to target individual connected televisions with unique advertising, is mass-market – but we have reached a close second, thanks to a combination of dumb TVs and smart devices. “Everyone would like to get in to … the dream of one-to-one advertising,” […]

As TV audiences start watching TV on more devices than just, well, TV, marketers face a challenge – how do they measure, target and price their advertising efforts? Companies tackling and talking about that problem are now commonplace. One such, Cadreon, believes the answer lays in what global president Arun Kumar calls “advanced TV” – a […]

A host of ad tech platforms is helping marketers break down the boundaries between buying TV ads, VOD ads, digital video ads and all the other flavors of moving-image ads. That’s the topic that seems set to dominate the upcoming DMEXCO digital marketing expo in Cologne. Speaking with Beet.TV in this video interview, FreeWheel marketplaces GM James Rooke channels […]

The auto-playing video ads Facebook introduced a while back could make the social network $3.8 billion by 2017, a Nomura analyst recently forecast. So just how good is the new format, and what challenges remain? Ben Winkler, chief digital officer of ad agency OMD USA, says the ads were bound to be successful, given Facebook’s scale – […]

This year, all the hot advertising talk is about the linking of planning, targeting and buying for TV ads and ads on handheld internet devices. For TV viewers distracted by touchscreens during commercial breaks, Teletrax has been gaining attention for allowing brands that are advertising on the living room big screen to also buy ads on social […]

So far, “programmatic” technologies for targeting and automating online ad buying have revolutionized the display ad segment. They have also made big in-roads in to video ads. Whilst few expect such a big bang in the television sector any time soon, WPP’s programmatic unit Xaxis expects to have its technology on-stream by the start of 2016. […]

Across the advertising industry this year, the main challenge seems to be uniting brands’ understanding of how consumers respond to ads across the many different media they now use. One more vendor tackling that problem is Tapad, whose “device graph” model aims to help clients do just that. “We’re working with a (television) manufacturer that has […]