Steve Ellwanger

Interactive television ads are increasingly providing meaningful engagement for both brands and viewers. “It’s that direct access and ability to understand something in the moment that I think is really interesting,” says Jon Stimmel, Chief Investment Officer at global media and advertising agency UM. What needs more refinement is marketers’ understanding of specific households for […]

When Jacqueline Corbelli founded BrightLine in 2003, television was a predictable if restricted experience for viewers, advertisers and content owners. Now, however, “Pandora’s out of the box,” Corbelli says as she observes the titanic machinations of media companies to keep up with contemporary viewing habits. Corbelli puts reasons for all those machinations into three buckets: […]

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit has a new Mobile Video Analytics solution embedded in mobile phones that provides a range of information on the quality and performance of the most popular mobile video streaming applications. It uses a combination of proprietary video quality and performance testing with real-time usage data from thousands of people in more than […]

Even as video content providers endeavor to keep up with viewing choices, commercials need to catch up with viewing technology. To do so, they need to get smarter, says BrightLine’s Rob Aksman. “The impetus is on us now to make sure advertising does not fall behind and keeps pace with all the personalization and seamlessness […]

As the market capabilities for addressable advertising continues to grow, it might best be considered a tactical balancing act whose ultimate utility resides in a perceived value exchange for individual brands. In the right situations, addressable can be “a fantastic tool,” says Adam Gerber of GroupM’s Essence agency. Whether to employ addressable depends on a given […]

Long known for its dynamic ad capabilities, BrightLine decided to add “a data side to the equation” with its DataCast offering in early 2018. The platform was built from scratch to account for core differences between Internet and mobile approaches that do not effectively port to TV, and many premium content providers have since signed […]

With 78% of its viewing happening on living room television sets, Hulu has a big stake in solutions like comScore’s soon-to-launch Campaign Ratings tool for measuring de-duplicated, cross-platform audiences. “I would say that there has been a lot of progress” in cross-screen measurement, says Hulu’s Julie DeTraglia. “I will give the industry all of the […]

As it prepares to launch “a new kind of advertising company,” the AT&T Advertising and Analytics unit is doubling down on the attention economy and how marketers and publishers must harness data and technology to attain relevancy amid an explosion of consumer content choices. “There is almost infinite information fighting and competing for finite human […]

Defining the term “advanced TV” is complicated, but that’s just a reflection of reality right now. Because it’s going to be awhile before there’s uniformity in understand how people engage with video content and measuring the impact of that engagement, says Adam Gerber. As the President of Global Media for the Essence agency surveys the […]

Cross-platform advertising buys are soaring at DISH Media Sales as more media agencies create advanced-television teams, while the operational efficiency afforded by programmatic technology continues to grow. This is Jim D’Antoni’s snapshot of the advanced TV and addressable advertising space explains how more marketers are integrating addressable buys into their strategic planning instead of integrating […]

Amid the seemingly unending competitive jostling among its constituent owners, Hulu has kept its focus on one thing: giving advertisers and viewers as many choices as possible. Having rolled out interactive ad units earlier this year that enabled viewers to buy movie tickets with their television remote control, “We’re continuing to push more of that […]

Since they’ve controlled infrastructure, subscriber files and advertising inventory, MVPD’s have been the primary gatekeepers of the growing addressable television business. Enter Sorenson Media with its fledgling, smart-TV-based addressable ecosystem and you’ve got some diversity in the marketplace. That’s how Mike Bologna sizes up Sorenson’s “somewhat unique” position in the addressable marketplace in this interview […]

To compete with digital video giants, TV operator DISH has adopted the mantra of offering easier and faster advertising buys driven by programmatic technology as it seeks to unite DISH and Sling TV inventory. “The business is changing so fast and there’s so many different opportunities and solutions out there that are going in so […]

With more than 20 years of experience in various forms of traditional direct-response media, Assembly’s Fabian Villegas sees elements of DR appearing in some very non-traditional places, including addressable television. “The DR and the general market environments are sort of merging a little bit. So now everything is going to be measured, whether it’s a […]

AMC Networks is adding an addressable advertising solution to its tool kit via a ground-breaking partnership with Sorenson Media in what it sees as a complement to the growing pool of inventory that can be used to target specific households. “We’re very excited to take this step into addressable television,” says Adam Gaynor, who joined […]

Two years after the launch of Discovery Engage, a data-driven linear television targeting solution, Discovery has expanded from three targetable categories to nine. Now bolstered by its acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive, Discovery is in a pilot with Sorenson Media to offer advertisers “a complete marketing mix,” says Discovery’s Keith Kazerman. “Many clients now are […]

More than half of the advertising inventory on Sling TV’s platforms in the last month was sold via programmatic, private auctions. “The growth we see is astounding,” says Adam Lowy, Director of Advanced TV & Digital Sales at DISH Media Sales. Sling works with two supply-side platforms—SpotX and Telaria—and interfaces with all the major demand-side […]

It’s taking awhile, but the advertising space is “progressing and modernizing” to keep up with changing viewing behavior, with virtual MVPD’s representing the best of what TV can be, according to Adobe’s Todd Gordon. “What we hear consistently from clients is that they still believe that TV is extremely effective in driving brand preference, driving […]

One of the easier sells when it comes to addressable television advertising is the entertainment category, where advanced targeting can give a major boost to tune-in messaging. “I think it is something that we feel is a pretty integral part of the buy. We’re beyond trying to extol the virtues of addressable. It’s a base […]

By the time Sling TV launched in early 2015, dataxu already was an established demand-side platform with all of the pipes in place for programmatic and real-time bidded inventory. “What really set things off for us is the ability to bring in a cross-device platform that extends the type of targeting and campaign execution you’d […]