Robert Andrews

COLOGNE — Microsoft wants to make its entire product line-up a billboard opportunity. The company wants brands to ride its many platforms and products to reach users, whether that’s via Windows 8, smartphones, gaming or Skype. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a homeworking scenario, a stay-at-home mom scenario, an auto researcher scenario,” says corporate […]

COLOGNE — Simply running ads to monetize online video is not enough, according to one figure in the space. “One of the things we’re addressing is the fragmented device space,” Adobe’s senior technology evangelist Jens Loeffler says in this video interview with Beet.TV. “This is not the desktop browser anymore. You’re dealing with a very […]

COLOGNE — The UK’s TV networks have spent the last few years building up their distinct cross-platform catch-up services against which to sell pre-roll ads. Now they are showing interest in letting some of those ads be bought by programmatic, real-time bidding algorithms. Speaking to Beet.TV, Danny Hopwood, the EMEA platform head for ad group […]

COLOGNE — “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed,” wrote sci-fi novelist William Gibson. And that’s exactly the landscape for so-called programmatic and real-time automated ad bidding techniques. “The way publishers have engaged with the programmatic space in Europe has been much more careful – they’ve thought about it much more,” […]

When Matt Prohaska joined The New York Times as programmatic advertising director in May, it was clear The Gray Lady intended to open up her ad inventory to newfangled programmatic ad bidding technology. Now that process has started in earnest. “In the last few months, we’ve directly engaged our sales force and integrated programmatic in to […]

AMSTERDAM — Online video technology supplier Rovi’s top priority is helping clients pump out video in the next-generation video compression standard. Succeeding the popular H.264 standard, High-Efficiency Video Compression (H.265) promises up to 50 percent smaller video sizes for cheaper online transmission. Rovi has been amongst the few to commit early support for the standard, in […]

AMSTERDAM — Akamai may be best known for helping speed up the flow of internet packets of all kinds using its distributed network technologies. But the Cambridge, MA-based outfit is also zeroing in on the booming online video industry. In this video interview with Beet.TV at the IBC show, EMEA product director Stuart Cleary says […]

COLOGNE — Automated, programmatic ad-buying technologies are disrupting the display advertising market. And, increasingly, they will do the same for video ads, says one exec. “From an advertiser point of view, the idea of audience targeting is something they’re extremley keen to do across video as much as they are across other places,” Caspar Schlickum, […]

COLOGNE — The US PRISM data snooping controversy has hampered efforts to argue against European ad-targeting rules that are already too onerous, says GroupM Interaction COO John Montgomery.   GroupM is the media agency  holding unit of WPP. “The US is trying to support self-regulation – we’re trying to avoid any form of legislation by regulating […]

COLOGNE — Don’t call it “Rise Of The Machines”, but AOL’s new ad chief reckons real-time ad bidding algorithms will soon do much of the grunt work currently done by Mad Men and women. In this video interview with Beet.TV at the DMEXCO industry conflab, AOL Networks’ Bob Lord says: “Traders on the floor (of Wall […]

AMSTERDAM — The upcoming successor to the popular H.264 video standard could save video content owners money on encoding by reducing file sizes by up to 50 percent. But, so far, adoption of High-Efficiency Video Compression (HEVC) has been slow. “The key challenge around HEVC today is to put all of the pieces together,” says […]

COLOGNE — The emergence of real-time, programmatic online ad buying is usually seen as a race toward cheaper ad pricing and, therefore, appealing more to lower-tier publishers. But, speaking to Beet.TV at DMEXCO, the CEO of AOL’s ad server business, AdTech, says he is hoping to appeal to bigger publisher brands, some of which are […]

COLOGNE — Earlier this year, AOL launched Marketplace, a supply-side ad platform allied to its Adtech ad-serving business that helps premium publishers sell their non-reserved ad spots. Then, the launch happened only in the US and UK. But now AOL is green-lighting Marketplace across Europe. “This is about giving publishers the controls and the choices […]

AMSTERDAM — At this year’s video industry conferences, we are hearing a lot from technology vendors claiming to have cracked the second-screen advertising opportunity. The latest is a pairing, Cisco and Innovid, who used IBC to show off two proofs of concept. In the first, the pair would use metadata describing a linear TV ad […]

COLOGNE — Everyone in media nowadays is eager for more data to inform their business. Now AOL is hoping to bring more data to every part of the video value chain, launching a new tool called Insights. “There’s such a big gap right now,” AOL Networks international SVP René Rechtman tells Beet.TV in this video […]

AMSTERDAM — Norwegian web browser maker Opera is having a busy International Broadcasting Convention show. It announced IPTV firms Amino and AirTies will adopt Opera’s software on their devices, giving Opera greater traction for its ambitions to break in to interactive TV. And the firm also announced it is basing the latest version of its […]

AMSTERDAM — Content owners who want to get their content on new smart TV platforms frequently need technology vendor help. One such TV app maker, 24i Media of the Netherlands, is expanding globally on this quest. “We probably will start an office this year in the United States in order to be closer to our clients,” […]

AMSTERDAM — Speaking with multiple online video players at the International Broadcasting Convention, you get the feeling the industry has converged on one main challenge this year – how to deliver video to a burgeoning number of different devices. “We see device fragmentation,” Boston-based Brightcove media and broadcast services CTO Albert Lai tells Beet.TV in […]

AMSTERDAM — One of the biggest beasts amongst online video technology vendors says the space has never seen such change. “We are at a time of fundamental change in the way people are delivering video, and it’s all driven by consumers,” Brightcove CEO David Mendels tells Beet.TV in this video interview at the IBC show. […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Just when many in the industry are excitedly committing to buying targeted ad slots using automated, real-time bidding systems, some publishers want to slow down the real-time clock – and one agency group is backing them. “Today, (real-time bidding) is known as being motivated by trying to drive prices down as low […]