Robert Andrews

LAS VEGAS — Rights restrictions traditionally have made it a challenge for many a digital platform to grab content. But Diffusion Group senior analyst Joel Espelien says one TV content type is lagging behind the others. “We’ve seen the rise of entertainment programming making it on to multiple screens – but we didn’t really see that with sports,” he tells […]

LAS VEGAS — A digital media world in which TV manufacturers keep changing their underlying smart operating systems risks wrong-footing and frustrating content owners, says Ovum TV principal analyst Paul Jackson. “A number of manufacturers here have switched horses in terms of what their OS is going to be,” Jackson tells Beet.TV in this video […]

LAS VEGAS — Broadcast networks, peeved that TV audiences are moving to platforms for which they don’t have big live sports rights, are likely to try negotiating hard when rights are due for renewal. “Broadcasters have paid godawful sums of money,” Paul Sweeting, a media analyst who consults through his own Concurrent Media Strategies and writes for […]

LAS VEGAS — The New York Times wants to make a big deal out of crafting sponsored articles for advertisers on mobile. “Native is the ad format for mobile … discoverable in-stream right alongside our own content,” says ad products SVP Michael Zimbalist. “We see a big opportunity for The New York Times and for […]

LAS VEGAS — Oculus Rift may have been conceived for playing games, but marketers increasingly view it as a place to communicate messages. “360-degree, immersive experiences are really starting to explode now,” according to DigitasLBi technology SVP Tony Bailey. He calls virtual reality “a new way of thinking about storytelling”. “If you’re in beverages and you […]

LAS VEGAS — One year after it was merged with Group M stablemate 24/7 Media, programmatic ad tech division Xaxis expects more industry M&A in 2015. “We always talk about how much movement there is in the industry,” says Xaxis chief revenue officer Nicolle Pangis. “But the fact is, that’s the norm in this industry. Every […]

LAS VEGAS — The more social networks across which brands attempt real-time marketing, the more channels they have to monitor for resonance. One Canadian startup, DIVE  Networks, wants to help out with that. “The landscape for brands is very complex. it’ so hard to keep up with real-time marketing,” CEO Deborah Hall, who previously founded […]

LAS VEGAS — The emerging age of targeted TV advertising will mean an end to reaching viewers based on the shows they watch and instead usher in individual viewer profiling. “Advertisers (today) are overwhelmingly buying audience … using content as a proxy for that audience,” according to Adobe Primetime’s principle product evangelist Noah Levine. “That’s […]

LAS VEGAS — 4K TVs were all the rage at the Consumer Electronics Show – but 4K content for those shiny new screens was not so much in evidence. The chicken-and-egg problem likely involves the realization that, today, broadband pipes just aren’t big enough to deliver next-generation TV quality en masse. “We know that customers […]

LAS VEGAS — After six years of chronicling the mobile consumption marketplace with its annual insights reports, mobile analytics firm Flurry, recently purchased by Yahoo, says the medium has reached new heights. “We’ve seen usage of mobile grow 76% year over year,” CEO Simon Khalaf tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “That’s insane growth – […]

LAS VEGAS — If a consumer ripped a clip of your content and posted it to YouTube, would you chase her with a lawyer’s notice? Zach James would embrace the act. The co-CEO of video rights management and branding solutions startup ZEFR says his company “makes sense of the 90% of the videos that you […]

LAS VEGAS — Microsoft is changing the way it works with advertisers, according to the woman recently hired to lead its US brand marketing relationships. “We are going through company-wide, top-down change,” Ritu Trivedi, who joined from being MediaVest’s USA digital marketplace VP in October, tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The product teams are now […]

LAS VEGAS — Don’t go expecting any major bumps in the economic road in the year ahead. The CEO of the world’s biggest ad agency holding group, WPP, says 2015 will have a familiar look. “Overall, I see ’15 being slightly better than ’14,” Sir Martin Sorrell tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “This time […]

LAS VEGAS — So-called “programmatic” TV advertising, in which TV ads would be traded with digital targeting and efficiency, is coming a long way – but still has key challenges to address if it is to reach the heights many hope for, according to one sector exec. “We’re in a nascent timeframe for programmatic TV. It’s […]

LAS VEGAS — European advertisers are taking to video advertising and so-called “programmatic” online ad technologies at varying progressive degrees, according to GroupM Interaction UK MD Jakob Nielsen. “(In the) UK … TV buyers are constantly looking to new audiences,” Nielsen tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “With video… in the diminishing-return space, all of a […]

LAS VEGAS — We keep hearing a lot about how the ad-buying processes for television and digital video may be on a path to merging. But, asked if that was happening yet, agency ad-buying software platform Mediaocean’s CEO Bill Wise says: “They’re not converging. TV is vastly different from video, which looks and feels like ad tech […]

LAS VEGAS — “TV Everywhere“, the method through which US cable operators allow subscribers online viewing of their bundles, has become the industry’s “whipping boy,” Adobe’s Primetime product marketing director Campbell Foster says. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Foster channels the three main complaints levelled at the system – ranging from “accurate and fair […]

LAS VEGAS — Programmatic video ad trading platform SpotXchange sold a majority of itself to German broadcast holding group RTL because it wants a bigger slice of a legacy TV industry.. “Europe is a really big market – it’s really challenging in each and every country,” CEO Mike Shehan tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “For […]

LAS VEGAS — As more ad targeting and buying platforms come online, planners and buyers are having to use a growing number of software suites to place messages. Last year, AOL announced its bid to simplify the landscape – and its own offering – by combining its programmatic platforms under the “One” banner. Now company […]

LAS VEGAS — The New York Times has intrigued many with sponsored articles it has run under the “Paid Posts” scheme it launched in 2014. Now it is finding that branded articles carrying video are consumed most. “A lot of our best-performing stories have had video as part of them; many of them are multi-media,” Times […]