Robert Andrews

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 […]

SAN JUAN — Ad spending on over-the-top (OTT) TV was expected to increase 40% to $2 billion in 2018, with addressable TV spend reaching $800 million, according to Magna. That means spending on addressable TV – with which buyers can use advanced data and return path to more precisely target viewers and households – would represent only […]

SAN JUAN — If you listen to the tech crowd and if you look at some of the consumer behavior, TV is “dying”. But, if that is the case, how do you explain Netflix? Many executives in the industry have long since moved on from using “TV” to describe the box in the living room connected […]

SAN JUAN — For decades, the notion of return on investment from TV ads has been ironically straightforward. Brands would buy ads and, with little insight in to who really watched what, would need to unleash a slew of media mix modelling tools to understand what exposures may have led to which purchases. That imprecision […]

LAS VEGAS — CES may have been a tech show and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) may have been established to advocate digital advertising – but there is a growing school of thought that suggests digital brands need good ‘ol TV, too. In this video interview with Beet.TV, IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg says he sees an […]

LAS VEGAS — CES may be thought of as a technology show, but there is one kind of technology product that dependably still takes center-stage at the event – televisions. In Las Vegas, Beet.TV found technology executives eager to say that, despite growing industry concern at changing viewer behavior, TV still has unique qualities. But […]

SAN JUAN — It’s now 13 years since the phrase “data is the new oil“, it is believed, was first uttered. Now we are living in a world which is swimming – or, perhaps, drowning – in the sticky, digital substance. For many in broadcasting, data is proving to be transformational to the way they […]

SAN JUAN — It is the technology that can laser-target an ad at individual TV viewers or households, and then control how many more ads get seen across TV and other media. But what is the state of “addressable” television? A Beet Retreat panel convened by Beet.TV in Puerto Rico discussed that topic. Slow addressable […]

SAN JUAN — It did it once before in an earlier media era, so can cable groups’ joint sales group tackle another wave of ad platform fragmentation? Operated by Comcast, Charter and Cox Communications, NCC Media launched in 1981 to provide a common way for ad buyers to get on to disparate and disconnected cable, satellite […]

SAN JUAN — Spending $52.4 billion to acquire 21st Century Fox would be pretty transformational by anyone’s standards. For Disney, the acquisition a year ago added to an already-broad portfolio of assets, and came right as the company was figuring out a direct-to-consumer SVOD strategy and learning to get to grips with a whole new world […]