Robert Andrews

LAS VEGAS — Marketing land is abuzz about “native advertising” – the hybridized presentation of marketing in the guise of publisher editorial. As different publishers and agencies approach the opportunity in different ways, the commonly accepted notions of what constitutes an ad and how you recognize it begin to break down. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wants […]

LAS VEGAS — Branded content is hot in marketing land. Now Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG’s) is saving brands the trouble of creating their own content – by obtaining publishers’ permission to re-publish theirs. SMG’s new Content@Scale CMS, launched this week, ingests text articles and images from Ahalogy, Demand Media, Glam Media, Forbes, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Parade, […]

LAS VEGAS – Content@Scale, the new content marketing platform launched by Starcom Mediavest Group, will soon add video capability to its text article re-distribution offering. The service lets marketers licence “evergreen” articles from 15 US publishers to re-use as content in display ad units. Flite CEO Will Price, whose technology powers the service, says he […]

LAS VEGAS — 4K televisions being touted at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) promise phenomenal-quality viewing in the years ahead. But traditional broadcast infrastructure may not be able to cope with the extra demands, and broadband pipes may not be fat enough either, says one exec. “The only way a wireline operator is going to […]

LAS VEGAS — The New York Times’ web redesign on Wednesday opened the site up to paid articles from sponsors – but a distinction will always be clear and the publisher wants only “sophisticated” examples of the format including video, the exec in charge tells Beet.TV. “We are going to give marketers a platform to […]

LAS VEGAS — Pubmatic has long offered premium publishers the ability to sell their display and mobile ad inventory using real-time systems. Now it’s about to offer video ad sales in the same way, too. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, the Redwood City- and New York-based company president Kirk McDonald tells Beet.TV Pubmatic will […]

“Coding” is the new black, and there’s no longer a shortage of service teaching kids, women and all comers the virtues of computer programming. One of the latest, EngineHere, aims to to get ahead of the pack by replicating the familiar school environment using online video. Recently-launched, EngineHere uses Tokbox’s WebRTC video tools to support […]

Everyone has been talking about “second-screen” experiences. But what do those experiences really bring to advertisers’ party? Greater consumer engagement, says a tech vendor. In the Netherlands, Civolution, whose technology knows which ads are playing on which TV channels and when, has been delivering that real-time data to Group M’s data-driven ad unit Xaxis. “As […]

Advertisers imagine a world where they target ads by knowing just what viewers are watching. In digital, that world is coming in time. But, in analog, it’s already here. Around a million US households are feeding their TV tuning data to media monitor Kantar Media, which uses it to help WPP stablemate Xaxis buy digital […]

The apparent shortage of premium video inventory against which brands can advertise is being driven in part by insufficient verification for who is really watching what, says one ad exec at the sharp end. Group M data unit Xaxis‘ audience strategy manager Evan Hanlon blames “shortage” partly on the “lack of our ability to verify […]

After Tokbox closed its own-brand consumer video chat service in 2011, it began opening up its own technology to offer as a platform for rival services. Two years on, CEO Ian Small is thanking a Google-backed web video initiative for supporting his company. “A little over a year ago, Chrome introduced WebRTC,” Small tells Beet.TV. […]

clypd may have recently taken on $7.2 million in VC funding to build out its ambition to bring data-driven advertising to television – but an exec says things are moving faster than anticipated. “We have a total $10.5 million (in investment) – this is being used to build out the team, build out the platform,” […]

This year, Dutch TV data provider Civolution has been helping social ad firm Optimal place Facebook ads on second screens, chronologically synchronized with TV ads. Next up, the firm wants to get a lot more detailed. “2013 was all bat establishing the goalset,” Civolution senior product manager Stefan Maris tells Beet.TV. “2014 will be all […]

Many people are out to re-invent education as a “flipped classroom“, in which learning and interaction is carried out remotely and digitally. Tokbox CEO Ian Small agrees video is just the medium to support the idea. “WebRTC on its own solves the one-to-one, peer-to-peer (video) case reasonably well,” he tells Beet.TV. “But what it doesn’t really […]

Today, the TV tuning habits of a million American households is helping Kantar Media advertising partners target digital ads. Tomorrow, the applications could be far more widespread. “One of the things on our roadmap, as we’re very integrated in television, is to broaden the perspective,” Kantar chief commercial officer Bud Breheney tells Beet.TV. “You have […]

Putting users in control can put publishers at an advantage, it seems. Google’s TrueView video ad format may let users skip YouTube pre-roll ads – but that doesn’t mean reduced engagement, says a company exec. “One of the most interesting findings that we’ve gotten from TrueView, both on YouTube and also off of YouTube and […]

Advertisers should think of basic 15- and 30-second digital video ads as the “blank canvas” for interactive creative ad engagements, according to an executive from video ad tech vendor Videology. “There’s a second layer of optimization around the interaction with the audience,” product GM Rich Astley tells Beet.TV. He says Videology’s own technology offers basic interactivity […]

Lately, ad tech vendors have been rushing like bulls out of a gate to bring out new automated ad delivery tools. But this proliferation may not always be the case, according to a top Google exec. “There could easily be some contraction in this marketplace, or acquisition,” Google media platforms sales head Jay VanDerzee tells Beet.TV. “The next […]

Today, super-automated and -targeted ad buying dubbed “programmatic” is mostly  brought to bear on straightforward display ads in standard formats. So, with engaging new devices demanding new-wave interactive ad formats, will programmatic reach this new area? “Technology will catch up to the creative,” Real Media Group president Nicolle Pangis tells Beet.TV. “We’ve seen it in display, […]

Mindshare wants to deal in real-time ads – but it hates the price spikes that can be associated with the mechanism. The group’s north America MD James Powell tells Beet.TV he needs “inflation-immune pricing”… “Strong publishers aren’t necessarily dumping all their good content in to a programmatic sphere at the moment. And, even if they […]