Steve Ellwanger

CANNES – Is the semantical divide between “television” and “digital video” crumbling? Judging from discussions at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, the answer is yes. At least it is in the mind of Matt Spiegel, Managing Director of strategic advisory and business development firm MediaLink. Following his role as moderator of the FreeWheel/Beet.TV New […]

CANNES – Advertisers aren’t getting less protective of their audience targeting data but they are increasingly willing to work with data and content providers. At the same time, they’re relying less on intuition to choose the most suitable programming for their brands, according to Mel Berning, A+E Networks’ President of Sales. He sees these trends […]

CANNES – As more marketers seek to use data to achieve the kind of accountability that direct-response media has typically provided, agencies are improving the way they handle sensitive consumer information. In the past month alone, Dentsu Aegis Network rolled out a PII-based data platform and appointed a global data compliance officer in advance of […]

CANNES – Call it digital déjà vu. The global convergence of television and video that has set off a wave of consolidation and new market entrants in the United States first began to emerge in Europe about two years ago. Fast-forward and you had deals like NBC and Comcast and now the pending acquisition of […]

CANNES – Sir Martin Sorrell says marketers are changing their attitudes toward programmatic media buying at the same time as the growth of alternative content continues unabated. In this interview with Beet.TV, he also talks about WPP’s investments in content producers and how advertising “in one form or other” is seeping into Netflix. In the […]

CANNES – Having spent nearly four decades in advertising, Carl Fremont perceives artificial intelligence as “beyond transformational” and “completely disruptive.” For their part, marketers need to be brave and experiment with AI while not thinking short term about it, Fremont says in this interview Beet.TV with The Weather Company CMO Jordan Bitterman at the Cannes […]

CANNES – Solving the challenges of optimizing advanced television and premium video surely will provide better audience targeting and advertising performance. But just as important, it’s also a “bulwark” for agencies to defend their turf against consultants and other forms of disintermediation. This is the viewpoint that Tim Castree brought to global advertising and media […]

CANNES – OMD’s Chief Investment Officer welcomes a warming of the discourse between traditional TV content providers and their digital counterparts. Not only does it reflect reality, embracing both is the only way for advertisers to meet their business objectives, says Ben Winkler. In this interview with Beet.TV, Winkler mentions a conversation he had onstage […]

CANNES – Because it may have grown to become too big and too expensive, the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity should be examined for its location and format, according to Sir Martin Sorrell. However, boycotting the event or not participating is not the right approach, according to the Founder & CEO of WPP. Sorrell’s comments […]

CANNES – Advertisers have made big strides in understanding issues like digital ad viewability and consumer attention. Now they need to focus more on understanding business outcomes. To Jay Sears, this means focusing not on proxies or clicks or even intention “but actual sales lift as the result of an exposed population seeing an ad.” […]

CANNES – First off, don’t call them avatars. They’re “digital humans” with their own biologically inspired emotional models. And they are ready to help bring brands to life in amazing ways. In this, Soul Machines Co-Founder & CEO Mark Sagar walks The Weather Company CMO Jordan Bitterman through three immersive and utterly absorbing examples of […]

CANNES – Just as brands want to have a singular view of their users and prospects, forward-thinking media investment companies know they can no longer maintain channel-specific teams. It takes big investments in technology—some of it artificial intelligence-enhanced—to accomplish both. In the past 12 months alone, GroupM launched its global [m]PLATFORM and then bolstered its […]

CANNES – Andrew Feigenson joined Nielsen Catalina Solutions about six months ago hoping that the ad industry was moving toward an outcomes-based approach to measuring success. So far, he hasn’t been disappointed. “From an advertiser perspective, we’re seeing a lot of that right now. Brands that are actually taking sales impact as a KPI and […]

CANNES – Lost in the headlines about so-called fake news is the reality that artificial intelligence is making things better. But it’s not lost on Washington Post. “I think the way we think about AI is how to strengthen our journalism,” Jarrod Dicker, Washington Post’s Head of Commercial Product & Technology, says in this interview […]

CANNES – Bank of America believes that artificial intelligence, along with its upcoming digital assistant dubbed Erica, will make the financial giant more nimble and predictive with its customers. “I think it’s going to be an incredible enabler and make us much quicker,” BOA’s CMO, Meredith Verdone, says of AI in this interview with Beet.TV […]

CANNES – Artificial intelligence offers brands a wide spectrum of new capabilities, from machine learning insights to enabling more human experiences and interactions. “AI is in many ways like that word innovation,” says Lisa Donohue, Global Brand President of Starcom Worldwide. “There are so many parts to AI that fall under the equation.” In this […]

CANNES – The OMD Oasis, an annual fixture at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, doesn’t lack things to do and see. But its core mission is to make things simple for marketers at a time when creativity and technology are always intersecting. At the same time, the personal ambition of OMD Worldwide’s CEO, Mainardo […]

CANNES – The near-term forecast at The Weather Company calls for Watson—as in a name change that will place IBM’s artificial intelligence capabilities at the forefront of a company heretofore known for its atmospheric aptitude. “The experiences that we’re are bringing our clients through here that are all Watson-based is really where the future is […]

Back in 2012, before the words “safe environment” for digital video became industry mantra, a company called Outrigger Media launched OpenSlate. It was a tool to help advertisers target the long tail of video production. Among other things, the company knew “there would come a time in an industry that got hyper focused on audience […]

Creation and viewing of mobile video is growing in leaps and bounds but marketers aren’t moving fast enough to keep up with the trend. This is the focal point that Facebook will bring to the fore at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity as it continues to roll out new video formats. The social media […]