Robert Andrews

AT SEA  OFF THE COAST OF FRANCE — When Terence Kawaja first introduced the Lumascape, the visual map illustrating an alarming array of ad tech companies, he backed up the image with a call for a simpler world. But that simplification isn’t going to happen, the media finance expert now concedes. “Fragmentation is here to stay […]

CANNES, France – Marketers are striving to marry up their online video and TV ad operations as the tectonic plates of media shift beneath them, says one ad data group tryingto help. Simulmedia chief marketing officer David Cooperstein says “programmatic” ad-trading techniques, “for less-than-premium inventory, is probably the best way to monetize it at the […]

CANNES  — Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr a year ago was all about helping brands go beyond conventional display ad formats. And now Yahoo has started promoting Tumblr content marketing slots across its network. “The traditional inventory … haven’t really provided marketers the environment to tell a rich, engaging, robust story,” says Yahoo’s head of the […]

CANNES, France — So-called “programmatic” techniques for controlling and automating online ad trading came in to this world in low-quality ad inventory. But now even top-tier publishers are becoming happy to sell their ads in this way. “Three years ago, they would have never worked with a SpotXchange – today they are,” says the ad […]

CANNES, France — It’s commonly thought that the European market is generally adopting so-called “programmatic” ad automation and trading techniques later than the US. But it looks like the quality publishers there are buying in with greater gusto. “Premium publishers in Europe, they seem to have got involved in this much earlier,” according to Marco […]

CANNES, France — The conservative British mid-market tabloid is a gargantuan celebrity traffic driver online. Now it wants to both align and connect with a leading social messaging service. “It’s a little bit like WhatsApp,” says Jon Steinberg, the BuzzFeed president who was named Mail Online north America CEO this week. “It’s this giant thing that […]

CANNES — BBC Worldwide is working with Google’s advertising divisions as they try to amalgamate how the publisher sells its TV and digital video ad inventory. “Quite a lot of our best customers are buying on television and buying online – linear and digital,” BBC Worldwide’s global strategy and sales VP Tom Bowman tells Beet.TV’s […]

CANNES, France — Heineken’s US advertising boss is growing confident on the imminent melding of TV and online ad buying. “We’re getting to the point where the wall between traditional television and digital video are coming down,” Ron Amram tells Beet.TV. “You can literally see across it – looking at GRPs across the whole landscape. “With […]

CANNES, France —  Advertisers will spend less on US broadcast TV this year because viewers are moving gradually to other platforms, according to media agency OMD’s regional boss. “We will end up seeing US upfront total spend being slightly down versus a year ago,” OMD US CEO Monica Karo tells Beet.TV. “That is this natural progression […]

SAN FRANCISCO — The Disney/ABC Television Group says it has increased kids’ engagement with its mobile apps by refreshing the line-up through adding games to video last month. “We’ve already seen some of the stickiness increase,” the group’s video products and technology VP JR Grant tells Beet.TV. “(They place) an emphasis on getting more content types […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Lifestyle TV company Scripps Networks Interactive is already doing plenty in digital media – now it wants to better marry those activities with its core TV strategy. “Ninety-five percent of our revenue comes from linear – and yet we have a gargantuan digital side,” the company’s senior advisor Channing Dawson tells Beet.TV. […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Can crunching gigabytes of data help TV companies give viewers more of what they want? Christy Martin, chief technology advisor at search and recommendation firm ThinkAnalytics, thinks so. “There’s tons of opportunity that’s still untapped,” she tells Beet.TV. “With all the fragmentation that’s out there – for programmers making sure that their content […]

The online ad industry’s recent embrace of TV-style gross rating point (GRP) metrics for audience measurement has come largely thanks to roll-out of GRP systems by individual metrics groups. But the whole industry will have a sector-wide agreed GRP within a year, according to an advertising representative. “Now that everyone is agreeing that GRPs are […]

The reality that many of the online ads paid for by advertisers are not really viewed by human users – or, worse, fraudulently viewed by artificial bots – has risen up the industry’s agenda of late. ComScore chief research officer Josh Chasin characterizes it as “arms race”: “You have the good actors working to eliminate […]

SAN FRANCISCO — One of the social TV space’s most talked-about apps has apparently succeeded in driving up its user base after recently renaming and rebranding. “Traffic is up 25% to 30% month-on-month, so it’s going very well,” says Beamly co-founder Anthony Rose, who in April rebranded Zeebox, the service he launched in 2011, to […]

Advertisers don’t just want cheaper ad rates – they will increasingly search for more insight in to how their spend is really working, predicts one ad agency exec. “Client transparency is certainly going to be a big hot topic,” according to Zenith US CEO Dave Penski. “Are they getting what they’ve been promised? “Driving down […]

The emergence of stream-based content units popularized by mobile apps like Twitter and Facebook promises to simplify a confusing mobile advertising space, says an ad agency exec. “We’ve had an explosion of formats,” says Maxus’ north America chief strategy office Mark Egan We’re seeing a lot of this roll in to a common unit which […]

There are no longer any advertising “channels”, just technology, says a Publicis division exec. “We should no longer think in ‘channels’ anymore – we think in connectivity and user experience,” according to ZenithOptimedia north America corporate development EVP James Shoreland. Shoreland is working on breaking down silos between technology, data, brands and content: “This is […]

Does the adage “you get what you pay for” ring true when it comes to online video advertising? Although advertisers are often keen to drive down the prices they pay in a world now threatened by fake views, TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson warns that logic could be detrimental. “We get a lot of information requests […]

Who’s to blame for the rising problem of online ad fraud? Ad tech vendors aren’t the frauds themselves – but they should accept responsibility for keeping customers happy, says one platform boss. “We take the burden,” says says Brett Wilson, CEO of video ad tech vendor TubeMogul. “Anything you buy that isn’t what you think […]