Robert Andrews

CHICAGO – After a series of acquisitions in the last couple of years, consumer data company TransUnion is wrapping its units together into one, and “retiring” three former brands. The company had acquired Tru Optik, Signal Digital and TruSignal, as it built out its own ambition to provide consumer and household data to power ad […]

With traditional TV viewership declining, ad executives are looking to internet-connected TV (CTV) to pick up the slack. But, whilst CTV purports to enhance reach and control the frequency of ad exposure, what is the reality? That is the question CTV ad software supplier Innovid set out to answer when it undertook research into the […]

When TV viewing and advertising begins to look and function like digital advertising, how safe is the environment for brands to be in? Brand safety concerns once plagued digital display and online video inventory. They have been somewhat soothed by brand safety software. But, as conected TV rises, some of the same concerns are arriving […]

It’s the hot new financing trend for ad-tech companies hoping to go public, but what exactly is a SPAC? Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are becoming a popular way to do an IPO. It is “essentially a shell company set up by investors with the sole purpose of raising money through an IPO to eventually […]

A month after raising $270 million in its IPO, ad verification company Integral Ad Science (IAS) is spending almost that much to buy a further step into the world of connected TV (CTV). IAS announced it had acquired Publica, a CTV ads server platform, for $220 million in cash and stock. Now it plans to […]

In 2021, digital ad supply isn’t enough. Today, ad buyers want to know the provenance, the pathway and the performance of that inventory. If those are the three Ps of the practice known as supply path optimization (SPO), then here is another framework. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Ashwini Karandikar, EVP, Media, Technology, Data […]

Of the many digital ad buyers now engaged in “supply-path optimization” (SPO), most consider it a quest for efficiency. But what if it could also move the needle on social responsibility? In this video interview with Beet.TV, GroupM VP, Managing Partner, Global Head of Programmatic, explains how SPO is changing. Socially-responsible SPO SPO has risen […]

In the space between mobile and TV, what’s old is new again. Started in Japan in the mid-nineties, QR code were initially popular with the countries NTT DoCoMo mobile carrier. They never quite took off until they were baked into the cameras of iOS and Android. Recently, however, practices like contactless ordering from restaurant menus […]

Until now, many brands will simply have looked at customers as, well, customers. But, increasingly, the demands of recognizing diversity – and the profits that can come from doing so – are compelling them to understand distinct groups of people. It is a practice called human-centered design. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jason Gaikowski, […]

If you could see, in near real-time, how well an ad campaign was driving sales, you might be able to recalibrate it in “mid-flight”. That is what IRI, a consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) purchase data provider, is helping ad-tech companies and their ad buyers do. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jennifer Pelino, EVP of omni-channel media […]

BANGALORE –  FAST is exploding. Free Ad-Supported TV options are rising growing fast. According to eMarketer, in January 2021, just over a third (34%) of US households that had video streaming capability used ad-supported streaming services. But, whilst 26% of that was AVOD (ad-supported video on demand), the remaining 8% was something more familiar to […]

Google may have given third-party cookies a stay of execution to 2023 – but the trend is undeniable. Browser cookie deprecation, plus limits on mobile identifiers imposed by Apple amongst others, are limiting traditional  targeting methods used by advertisers. In this video interview with Beet.TV, one ad agency executive says technology can come riding in […]

Alison Pepper wants the advertising industry to respect consumers’ privacy. She just doesn’t want a multitude of ways in which to execute that. Europe ignited the new privacy era with its GDPR legislation, prompting California’s CCPA, deprecation of third-party cookies and other mobile identifiers and now a federal look at privacy policy. In this video […]

Dentsu’s John Lee, Global Chief Strategy Officer at its Merkle unit, is joining NBCU in the newly-created role of Chief Data Officer, sitting within the company’s Global Advertising & Partnerships division. The announcement was made today.  The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Late last year we spoke with Lee about publisher […]

When you’re a peacock whose rainbow wings spread across a wide variety of media channels, ensuring you get the correct assets in place can be a challenge. That’s why NBCUniversal has announced it will adopt Ad-ID, a kind of “bar code” identifier for advertising, as its standard for managing ad asset in-flow through its One […]

With the Summer Olympic Games beginning in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, July 23, many ad agencies would have committed their brands’ TV ad spending months ago. But what if those agencies wanted to buy or change their campaigns during the competition? NBC has partnered with video ad-tech firm Innovid to ensure that ads delivered through NBC’s […]

For many of us, 2020 marked the emergence into a whole new world – one ravaged by pandemic and one awakening to a thirst for fairness. For Marlo Skiko, it also marked another change. From being EVP ad ad agency Starcom, Skiko went brand-side at Ford Motor Company, as US and global head of media. […]

In the last 20 years of digital advertising, technology, it seems, has often been used to squeeze out optimization, efficiency and impact. But what if it could recalibrate the creative works that make all that happen? That is what is beginning to happen, as a new generation of AI-driven technology sets its sights on the […]

LOS ANGELES – In a world filled with technology and two distinctly different kinds of television, it all comes back to people. That is Ivan Markman’s view. As chief business officer Ivan Markman at Verizon Media, Markman just signed a deal to launch a new Unified TV Report, using Nielsen and Vizio data to help […]

Half a billion dollars can buy a lot of independence. For the man who just sold his company for that amount, the deal represents digital freedom for advertisers, in particular. Mediaocean agreed to acquire ad server Flashtalking for $500 million. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Flashtalking CEO John Nardone explains why he hopes it […]