Rob Williams

LAS VEGAS – Acxiom is framing gaming as a serious commerce channel rather than a novelty ad placement. Elizabeth Donovan, global head of commerce and retail media networks, said success depends on relevance, restraint and respect for gamers. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Donovan said gaming is first a community. Brands […]

LAS VEGAS – VideoElephant positions itself as a connective layer across the video ecosystem, linking media owners, publishers and advertisers through a vast content library and distribution network. Brian Cullinane, chief commercial officer of VideoElephant, said the company manages roughly 5 million short-form video assets, adding thousands more each day, alongside hundreds of thousands of […]

Connected TV advertising is rapidly evolving from a branding medium into a measurable performance channel, driven by advances in contextual targeting, data normalization and artificial intelligence, according to Dave Bernath, chief executive of streaming data and ad-tech firm Wurl. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan, Bernath said advertisers are increasingly able to use the same […]

LAS VEGAS – Media budgets are steadily moving from linear television to connected TV, opening new ways for marketers to reach audiences with greater precision, according to Dan Hickox, vice president of business development and partnerships at iSpot. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Hickox said the shift allows brands to activate […]

LAS VEGAS – Paul Lentz, head of strategic development at CVS Media Exchange, says personalization inside physical stores is becoming a central pillar of CVS’s retail media strategy. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Lentz said technology investments are helping the drugstore chain tailor the in-store experience to local communities rather than […]

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – Nielsen is pushing to broaden how the industry views the company, positioning itself not just as a ratings provider but as a full marketing intelligence partner, according to Peter Naylor, chief client officer at Nielsen. Speaking in an interview with Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, Naylor said his mandate […]

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – Nissan Motor Corp.’s chief marketing officer and global brand advisor Allyson Witherspoon says artificial intelligence has moved from a side experiment to the backbone of the automaker’s marketing organization. AI as the foundation of planning, measurement and creative Speaking with Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, Witherspoon said AI now […]

LAS VEGAS – As viewers gain more control over what they watch and when they watch it, Horizon Media is reshaping how it plans for connected TV. Speaking with Beet.TV at CES 2026, strategic investment lead Samantha Rose said CTV can no longer be treated as a single bucket. Instead, Horizon plans across distinct subcategories, […]

LAS VEGAS – Healthcare marketers are increasingly treating TV as the starting point for omnichannel strategy as connected TV adoption reaches critical mass and measurement improves, said Baron Harper, general manager of business development at The Trade Desk. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Harper said the industry is moving beyond simply […]

LAS VEGAS – Adam Singolda sees consumer behavior shifting faster than most media companies expected. Large language models such as ChatGPT are becoming a daily interface for information, he said, but the experience remains uneven across platforms. Some LLMs are ad free, others are ad-supported, while the open web sits largely outside those walled gardens. […]

The U.S. streaming advertising market reached a turning point in 2025 as a surge of ad-supported inventory reshaped pricing, buying strategies and definitions of premium television, says Kathy Argyriou, head of publisher sales at FreeWheel, a unit of Comcast. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan, Argyriou said the rollout of ad-supported tiers from major streaming […]

LAS VEGAS – Roku is leaning into a message advertisers have long wanted to hear: connected TV can now drive measurable business outcomes, not just awareness. Speaking with Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES 2026, Lauren Benedict, vice president of global ad sales and partnerships at Roku, said the company is seeing growing demand […]

LAS VEGAS – The retail media sector is entering a pivotal year marked by consolidation, self-service tools and less fragmentation across retailers, said Sherry Smith, president of retail media at Criteo. Speaking with Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES 2026, Smith argued that true growth in retail media networks (RMNs) will depend on brands’ […]

LAS VEGAS – As the advertising industry debates how quickly agentic AI will move from theory to practice, Alliant says the shift is already tangible inside its business. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Margo Hock, vice president of digital partners, said Alliant’s acquisition of AnalyticsIQ is now entering a critical phase. […]

Retail stores are already crowded with visual cues, from packaging to printed signs. The challenge for brands is breaking through that noise without slowing shoppers down. Chris Riegel, founder and chief executive of Stratacache, frames the store as a stage where motion can guide attention and influence choice. “If you think of a retail space […]

LAS VEGAS – Media fragmentation is reshaping performance marketing in two ways, said Todd Parsons, Chief Product Officer and President of Performance Media at Criteo. Consumers move fluidly across discovery, consideration and purchase channels, while marketing organizations still operate in channel silos. Speaking with Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES 2026, Parsons said the […]

LAS VEGAS –Sir Martin Sorrell, executive chairman of S4 Capital, has a blunt assessment of advertising’s future. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Sorrell said agentic AI “fundamentally challenges the model.” Strategic and creative under attack Sorrell argued that agentic systems threaten the traditional agency stack. “Strategic and creative is under attack,” […]

LAS VEGAS – At CES 2026, Comcast’s NBCUniversal rolled out an idea that sounds futuristic but solves an old headache: buying live sports ads without losing your sanity. Ryan McConville, chief product officer and EVP of ad products at NBCUniversal, said the company is testing agentic AI to automate live sports buying across streaming and […]

LAS VEGAS – At CES 2026, Albertsons Media Collective outlined how it is tightening measurement, expanding in-store media and using AI to link advertising more directly to sales outcomes. Senior Vice President Brian Monahan said the network is focused on shared growth across brands, merchants and shoppers. “We seek to live up to our name […]

LAS VEGAS – Agentic commerce is expanding how consumers shop rather than replacing existing channels, says Michael Komasinski, chief executive of adtech firm Criteo. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Komasinski said AI-powered assistants should be viewed as an incremental layer that complements search, social and retail media, not a substitute for […]