Robert Andrews

PHOENIX — InMobi’s deal to acquire Sprint’s Pinsight advertising unit may have closed last Q4 – but that doesn’t mean InMobi’s data on mobile subscribers is getting stale. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Anne Frisbie, InMobi SVP programmatic, says InMobi continues to enjoy live data on telco consumers. “It’s current,” she says. “It’s updated […]

Five years ago, in an excoriating and self-flagellating internal report, The New York Times gazed hard at its navel – didn’t like what it saw. “We are not moving with enough urgency,” said The New York Times’ leaked Innovation Report. “Our journalism advantage is shrinking as more of these upstarts expand their newsrooms. Many (of our […]

In a world where advertising partners play for both teams, you never really know who is on your side. So says one executive whose company felt so strongly about that issue, it split in two. Telaria spun off its division serving ad buyers back in September 2017 to focus only on providing a programmatic advertising […]

PHOENIX – It was only three years ago that advertising agencies stood accused, by the ANA’s K2 Transparency Report followed by a host of others, of operating a system of rebates and kickbacks that worked against brand clients by hiding substandard effectiveness. Now Sir Martin Sorrell, the man who used to run the world’s largest […]

Is bad news bad news for brands? A sometimes-toxic political climate has prompted some advertisers to shun news publishers. Some ad buyers buyers have even blacklisted news sites. Now publishers are fighting back. Vice has accused brand safety platforms of censorship and others like BBC News, News Corp, The Economist and CNN are protesting that bad news can be good news […]

A couple of years back, Hewlett Packard Enterprise partnered with CNN-backed video site Great Big Story to make a series of mini-documentaries about innovation, The Dreamers… For Marissa Freeman, it’s all part of a trend in which she sees appearing in a news environment as moving the needle. “For us, it’s all about being in […]

Over the last year, several news or so-called news sites have found their way on to the blacklists which some ad buyers and platforms use. Some media agency executives told Digiday they had blocked hundreds of news sites. We have also seen publishers like BBC News, News Corp, The Economist and now Vice Media protest that there is nothing bad about […]

LAS VEGAS — Its pay-TV rival Sky may have been first to market to offer highly-targeted, addressable TV advertising capability – but, for UK cable company Virgin Media, moves including a partnership on the technology with Sky itself are paying dividends. Now Virgin Media’s owner wants to replicate the impact across its global footprint. In […]

LAS VEGAS — It is the edgy, indie lifestyle-news zine that became an 800lb gorilla – Vice has blown up. Now the publisher wants to help brands reach a young audience that it knows is increasingly skeptical of being marketed to. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Vice Media international and global chief revenue officer […]

LAS VEGAS — The traditional deployment for TV ads has always been the top of the marketing funnel, where a mass audience’s interest gets ignited by awareness-raising branding ads. But new technology allowing TV to operate like digital channels means the medium can fulfil both awareness and “performance” goals, which aim to generate an actual, […]

The last two years have seen heady days – a sometimes-toxic political climate, on the one hand, and a growing trend in advertisers shunning that news, on the other. Some ad buyers buyers even blacklisted news sites, prompting one publisher to accuse them of censorship and others like BBC News, News Corp and The Economist to protest that bad news can […]

LAS VEGAS — What do you get if you add together Engadget, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, AOL, Yahoo, Flurry, Verizon and a host of other media properties? A media megalith that, at first, was dubbed “Oath” and, since January, is just plain “Verizon Media Group”. As a media proposition, what does a beast with such breadth […]

Over the last two years, we saw how many advertisers – deterred by an increasingly down-beat news agenda – were turning their dollars away from news itself, with some buyers even blacklisting news sites. Now the publishers are getting more vocal, however. In recent months, we have heard from the likes of BBC News, News Corp and The Economist and now Vice […]

LAS VEGAS — When Beet.TV has been asking media industry figures lately about the promise of going “direct-to-consumer”, most have talked about e-commerce brands that no longer require retailers or marketers that no longer depend on intermediary publishers. But Rohit Thawani has something altogether more creative in mind. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, the digital experiences […]

LAS VEGAS — At the recent Beet Retreat, Beet.TV heard several ad industry executives grumble that advertisers’ commitment to spending in advanced digital television environments was still experimental. But, if addressable TV ad spend is still small-scale, it may be a function as much of available ad space and success proof as of ad buyers’ […]

LAS VEGAS — The uber model for marketing strategy has been that of a funnel, through which a mass audience’s interest gets ignited by awareness-raising branding ads, eventually leading down to performance outcomes like sales. But new digital platforms are collapsing the marketing funnel as we witness the emergence of ad units which tick both […]

Programmatic technology may have grown up transacting remnant display ad inventory, but its increasing application to deliver ads to TV screens looks a world away from the advanced tech’s humble beginnings. In this video interview with Beet.TV, video publisher ad tech maker Telaria’s CEO Mark Zagorski says that “premium” publishers of video that reaches the […]

SAN JUAN — How long should a commercial break be? How lengthy should a TV ad be? And how many is too many? Over the last 18 months, TV networks have wrestled with that question, as booming VOD subscriptions has gone hand-in-hand with growing consumer frustration toward excess interruption. That has spurred many networks to […]

SAN JUAN — The value promised by connected TV systems offering addressable advertising always seemed to be that ad buyers could precision-target the viewer they want to reach. So why are so many advertisers either spending so little or using addressable for a different purpose? In this panel discussion at Beet Retreat, a cast of […]

SAN JUAN — It was billed as the revolution for television ad sales – the emerging prospect of using internet-connected platforms and audience viewing data to plan, execute and measure TV ad campaigns in real-time. After all, “programmatic” advertising unleashed “real-time bidding” (RTB) on to the world several years ago now. Today, real-time auctions for […]