Robert Andrews

LOS ANGELES — Online video technology vendor Rovi recently signed a deal to bring internet-connected on-screen program guides to non-connected TVs. The deal will see internet TV box makers Entone and Evolution Digital take on Rovi’s connected guies in their intermediary connected TV boxes, which enable TVs with connected features. “You’ve got a legacy infrastructure […]

LOS ANGELES — Could talking to your TV, not your viewing partner, be the next big thing? Rovi’s new chief operating officer thinks so. “Conversational search really will be one of the tools that will transform the TV experience where the user has the ability to converse with their navigation solutions to provide a more […]

LOS ANGELES — Subscribers to smaller US cable TV services may now get some of the basic interactive features of modern digital TV platforms, after TV tech firm Rovi signed a deal with the NCTC, a cooperative of nearly 1,000 cable operators. The deal sees Rovi’s DTA Guide, an electronic program guide software, get added […]

LOS ANGELES — You can’t move these days for ad tech vendors espousing the virtues of data-based targeting. Amongst that pack is Rovi, which launched its Audience Management Solution suite this January. “The entertainment industry has been slow to embrace big data and analytics,” says Rovi’s analytics product and technology VP Matthew Emans. He says […]

For the last year, online video advertisers have been realizing that as many as 40% of video ads played and paid for may not actually be viewed by humans on the other end. On Sunday, The New York Times ran a big feature that has taken this new idea, the dirty secret of true, “viewability”, […]

LOS ANGELES — CNN is seeking advertisers to buy slots in its recently-announced next-generation news platform, CNNx. The news broadcaster announced the product in April, including live-updating contextual information around real-time shows and scroll-back access to previously-aired stories. “You’re no longer at the mercy of the broadcast,” says Rajin Persaud, VP of next-gen business at the […]

Online video fingerprinting technology will be used by child porn police to seek out and take down the offensive material from the internet. Birmingham, UK-based Friend MTS says it has “donated” its F1 fingerprinting system to the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Once enforcers have found child porn videos, they will encode the videos […]

It’s that time of the year when online publishers present their upcoming products and services in the form of so-called “NewFronts” events. In its NewFronts, The Wall Street Journal announced a video segment about how technology drives hope and health, a data- and animation-driven short video series, a new tablet video magazine and a documentary […]

If the digital advertising people getting high on “programmatic” trading are to access the $70 billion US TV ad market this way, they had better develop some empathy first, says one of the industry’s leading media finance advisors. Luma Partners CEO Terence Kawaja says TV ad trading, historically reliant on broad demographic targeting, and digital […]

The realization that as many as 40% of video ad views may be faked by publishers has given rise to systems measuring true “viewability” for advertisers. But one ad tech vendor says ad buyers shouldn’t trust “viewability” numbers when they are produced by publishers themselves. “The key for viewability is to make sure that the measurement […]

AOL is touting 16 new video series to advertisers at its 2014 NewFronts event in Brooklyn. Leading the slate, Making A Scene With James Franco will see the actor-director and friends re-make much-loved scenes from old movies. “They’re going to re-do them with a twist – it’s going to be highly social,” AOL’s video president […]

AOL says it will become the first digital publisher to use Nielsen’s TV metrics to quantify its video shows for advertisers – a move that may expose it to comparatively lowly perception by comparison but which could allow it to seek a slice of the $70 billion US TV industry. “We are the first non-TV-originated […]

While the online media landscape is highly fragmented , some in the advertising chain are beginning to piece to overcome the disparate ecosystem by taking advantage of platforms that put technology niceties in the background, says one vendor. “It is a very fragmented market,” interactive video ad tech firm Innovid‘s co-founder and CTO  Tal Chalozin tells […]

It may have taken some time, but now ad tech platform operators can sell advertisers on identifying the proportion of their ads actually viewed by humans with a degree of industry backing, says one such operator. “The MRC (Media Ratings Council) and IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) have now defined a standard,” says BrightRoll‘s marketing operations […]

Media measurer comScore will syndicate its ambitious program to track audience consumption across five device types with a common currency later this year. “We’re about to deliver the product (Project Blueprint) to CIMM, that’s phase two,” says comScore chief research officer Josh Chasin, referring to the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), a group of leading […]

Breakfast cereal maker Kellogg’s is a big advertising spender – and it plans to spend a bigger chunk of money in online video, now that new technology is finally proving just how many people really view its video ads. “It was very important to consistently measure viewability and how we can make improvements in the […]

Nielsen will launch a new system for advertisers to measure the audience for mobile content and video properties this coming summer. “It’s all about mobile – it’s explosive,” the company’s global product leadership president Steve Hasker tells Beet.TV. “We have developed and are now testing the first industrial-strength robust measurement system for video and other types […]

Innovid has, for the last couple of years, developed its iRoll format – pre-roll video ads that let viewers click and engage with content more than simple 15- or 30-second linear spots. Now it is opening up its platform in a bid to recognize the many, many ad tech vendors in the video chain and […]

When it comes to Yahoo, critics will often ask, rhetorically: “What is it nowadays, anyway?” The company’s Americas head Ned Brody has a clear answer: “You need to start thinking about Yahoo as both a publisher and a network.” That means Yahoo doesn’t just want to be an owner and operator of its own web properties on […]

Programmatic video ad platform BrightRoll is integrating its systems with Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange, enabling buying of video ads on Google’s YouTube via “programmatic” methods from the BrightRoll end. “The DoubleClick bid manager has been a buyer on our marketplace for over a year – now we’re becoming a buyer in their marketplace,” BrightRoll CEO and […]