Robert Andrews

MIAMI — As the name of an organization, it may evoke memories of 1950s cop TV series – but, whilst the Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB) fights misdemeanors, it isn’t a crime-busting agency and its members don’t carry badges. Launched at the 4A’s Accelerate conference, APB is a new body through which ad agency groups will […]

MIAMI — Bitcoin isn’t the only beneficiary from blockchain, the underlying technology that powers decentralized cryptocurrencies and, potentially, a whole lot more. That same kind of infrastructure is getting people in several industries excited. In particular, blockchains’ ability to store an immutable, public ledger of every system activity. In the advertising world, that capability has […]

On the spectrum of ad-tech bold moves, it has to rank high. Last week, NBCUniversal announced it would create nothing less than “the industry’s first unified advertising metric”. So-called CFlight is a new measurement metric that aims to give advertisers a total sense of campaign viewership across screens, creating a new currency and offering guarantees […]

Ad-tech provider Mediaocean will soon begin deploying the technology that underpins decentralised cryptocurrencies as a solution in the fight for ad transparency. In this video interview with Beet.TV, company CEO Bill Wise says Mediaocean will be making a blockchain announcement in the next few months, though initial activity in entered on discussions with potential partners. […]

What do you get when you mix the largest TV ad-monitoring service with one of the crop of TV content recognition vendors? 4C Insights calls it “enhanced audience targeting and analytics for premium channels including linear television, over-the-top (OTT) television, social, and digital media”. Back in January, the ad intelligence company, whose Teletrax unit monitors […]

The TV world is engaged in a long-running effort to upgrade its measurement systems, which, traditionally, have involved viewers completing a questionnaire to indicate their weekly viewing habits. If TVs could automatically log viewers’ behaviour and report it back to measurement agencies, wouldn’t that be easier? It’s already happening. Automatic content recognition (ACR) happens when […]

As the rolling stone of digital privacy concerns has gathered more moss over the last couple of years, could TVs become the next device to worry consumers? In the practice of automated content recognition (ACR), a television set analyzes a viewers’ current viewing behavior to turn habits like viewing time and channel in to actionable […]

NBCUniversal’s TV inventory is about to become available to more advertisers thanks to an expansion through Adobe’s Advertising Cloud TV suite. The pair are announcing that NBCU’s Audience Studio, its suite of audience buying tools, will now plug in to the Adobe system, effectively creating a programatic private marketplace comprising NBCU’s broadcast and cable TV […]

The ability to target TV audiences with granular data, going beyond traditional age- and gender-based contextual matching, may have existed for a couple of years now. But history will likely show that the opportunity is still just getting started. “The opportunity is huge,” says Erica Schmidt, the global CEO of IPG Mediabrand’s ad-tech unit Cadreon. […]

There are now thousands of sources of customer data that can help ad buyers target their campaigns at particular groups of consumers. And many of them now extend to function on the new screen of advanced TV. But, in an ocean of data, how can advertisers catch the sets that are accurate, timely and effective […]

SAN FRANCISCO — When native advertising rose to prominence in 2011, many onlookers believed that, to match the unique publishing environment in which they were delivered, native ads could not scale to the kind of efficiencies demanded by modern ad-tech. But many a native ad vendor has proved that theory wrong. These days, it is […]

SAN FRANCISCO — In a world where advertisers will increasingly have to gain audience members’ permission to use personal data for targeted messaging, plenty of attention is swinging back to marketing. Many brands have spent years building up databases of their own customers. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Index Exchange CEO Andrew Casale says […]

SAN FRANCISCO — These days, TV companies have a lot of new data sources with which to better understand viewer behaviour and with which to help advertisers better reach the right audiences. Could voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home be the next big technology to light up the data-collection opportunity? In this video interview […]

SAN FRANCISCO — When Acxiom acquired LiveRamp back in 2014, the potential pairings were clear to see. But one tie-up that was not immediately obvious was video. Relative to modern consumption habits, video viewing had still not truly taken off, and video didn’t even garner a mention in the companies’ announcement. Fast-forward, however, and video […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Since it started in 2012, supply-side platform Clypd has focused on building an ad sales platform for TV owners. It has started to unpack its technology, making it available to a wider set of customers. That started this month, when Nielsen launched Advanced Audience Forecasting, a tool for TV audience forecasting, built on […]

For advertisers, the US local cable TV market has historically been bought using broad geographies, demographics and programming day-parts to try reaching the right audiences. But Comcast’s ad sales division is now helping buyers use data and advanced analytics to more precisely reach the viewer of their dreams, no matter what screen they are watching […]

SAN FRANCISCO — It is often said that, when it comes to advanced TV advertising, the UK has a lead through the Sky’s AdSmart offering. But, when it comes to insights in to advanced TV advertising, one company is now bringing capabilities to Europe that it says have existed in the US for years. Alphonso‘s […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Brands are rushing to spend on advertising in connected TV platforms – and agencies remain important to helping them do so. That is the view of one of the leading ad-tech platforms helping to inject ever-more video in to its historic programmatic operations. “Connected television spend on our platform from Q4 2016 […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Often, the end goal for a TV advertisement is to drive a consumer to purchase a product in a store. But what if the point of purchase was the start, not the end, of the whole strategy? That’s a question IRI, a marketing data company, is posing to advertisers.  Founded to capitalise […]

Is Cannes Lions still relevant? That’s the question occupying Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity managing director Jose Papa. The festival has long been a Mecca for advertising types – and, increasingly, those from other industries, too. But, last year, the Wall Street Journal reported ad agencies were cutting costs amid a downturn that was just beginning. At the […]