Robert Andrews

Online video advertising is taking off – because most of the ads are just plain ol’ TV commercials. Ruth Cartwright, the broadcast director at GroupM’s Maxus agency, told Beet.TV at the recent London Video Ad Strategy Summit her outfit is spending six to 10 percent of clients’ budgets on online video ads. “Ninety percent of the clients […]

Data-driven, automated video inventory buying (AKA programmatic buying) is “the future for video advertising,” according to one advertising executive working in the space. “With online video combined with traditional TV, we have much more precise targeting possibilities,” Rosa Markarian, the EMEA region product development director of GroupM’s Xaxis audience profiling unit, told Beet.TV during the […]

Many advertising execs are advocating the amalgamation of video ad buying across TV and online. But, at Beet.TV’s recent London Video Ad Strategy Summit, the online investment head of GroupM’s MediaCom agency, warned a single piece of creative must be judged very differently across the two formats. “There’s a tendency to want to revert everything […]

Programmatic ad-buying technologies, which are all the rage, can be a revelation for advertisers – but their use must go hand-in-hand with conventional advertising practices, according to one marketing advisor. “You may have the best targeting or programmatic technology, but if you’re not very good at engaging with your clients from a planning point of view, if […]

LONDON — Programmatic online advertising technology isn’t yet good enough, and will never match human salespeople for brand ad sales. That’s according to BBC Worldwide’s strategy and operations VP for global advertising sales, Tom Bowman. “There are some websites that have gotten rid of their salespeople,” Bowman told me during our one-on-one interview at Beet.TV’s […]

LONDON – TV engagement app zeebox is developing new features that will let Pacific-time and VOD viewers revel in the same social experience as live audiences. “We’re going to try to replay the entire experienced synchronised to the catchup,” co-founder Anthony Rose told Beet.TV in this interview. “You recorded Downton Abbey; we’ll bring you the […]

LONDON — The Financial Times famously replaced its iOS app with a HTML5 web app, after losing a fight for control over customer data and pricing. But its Apple absence doesn’t mean the FT hasn’t gone native elsewhere. “It’s not like we have a problem with native apps,” FT emerging platforms product manager Chris Smith […]

LONDON – Nielsen may soon announce the success UK advertisers are having placing video ad campaigns on both TV and the internet when it unveils first results from the British test of its new Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings (XCR) system. “For the UK, we recently deployed beta trials at the beginning of this month,” Nielsen VP […]

LONDON – Reuters has begun a “major” program to digitize 25,000 hours of analogue video content it hopes to license to content-hungry brands and to publishers eager for material to serve ads against. “It’s sitting in a basement,” Reuters’ global multimedia head Greg Beitchman told Beet.TV in this interview. “If you want that content today, […]

LONDON – Group M’s new data-driven audience-buying unit is convinced TV and online video advertising must join together but says TV people must use all the extra tools online offers. “The big goal and the only way to use all the benefits of online video is to combine traditional TV and online video and find […]

LONDON – GroupM media planning and buying agency Maxus says online video consumption is now so great that advertisers should buy campaign time across both online and conventional television. “VOD is more and more an integral part of any TV campaign,” Maxus’ Ruth Cartwright told us during Beet.TV’s London Video Ad Strategy Summit. “We’re looking […]

LONDON – Online video services may be growing thanks to carriage on new devices – but only top-quality programming will help internet upstarts really revolutionize the TV industry, industry analyst Ian Maude warns. “Time-shift and catch-up haven’t really disrupted the traditional advertising and pay-TV models. More and more people are spending more time watching traditional […]

LONDON – Return on investment (ROI) is the holy grail metric for justifying any marketing spend. But whilst surveys can show whether ad campaigns lift brand awareness amongst consumers, proving whether those consumers actually go on to buy anything as a result is trickier – especially in the emerging world of video ad formats. This […]

LONDON – Two years after launch, Nielsen’s reach-based Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) measurement system is now helping online video advertisers buy media with the same certainty they have from TV, says Videology‘s Ryan Jamboretz. “It is borne of the television world, but it’s being used as the dominant mechanism by which television money is shifting […]

LONDON – Everyone is talking about how consumers’ electronic breadcrumb trails can make for highly effective digital media advertising campaigns. Two years ago, WPP’s GroupM launched Xaxis, an in-house division dedicated to leveraging  audience profiles to even better target marketers’ messages. “It’s an evolution of the role of the media agency,” Xaxis’ EMEA managing director […]

CANNES – The incredible scale of Rovio’s Angry Birds in mobile gaming is also translating in to healthy video content adoption, according to Brightcove, the vendor picked to serve the franchise’s new online cartoon series. “The service launched three of four weeks ago,” Brightcove’s EMEA VP of media, Luke Gaydon, told Beet.TV in this interview. […]