Steve Ellwanger

LAS VEGAS – Watson Ads, the cognitive advertising product that’s been available to brands exclusivity within The Weather Company app and on weather.com, will be released for wider use in apps and on websites sites later this quarter. In the meantime, in an interview at CES 2017 with Beet.TV, Weather Company CEO and GM Cameron […]

LAS VEGAS – Turns out you don’t have to be on Wall Street to run a futures market. It’s happening every day in the traditional linear television business, according to Turner’s EVP of Client Strategy & Ad Innovation. “Unlike digital, we’re actually working in a futures market,” says Michael Strober by way of explaining Turner’s audience […]

LAS VEGAS – People who are fixated on the future of television are missing a great opportunity to mine linear TV right now. And best prospecting asset is a marketer’s own first-party data. That’s the worldview of Michael Zimbalist, CMO of marketing technology company Simulmedia, as he takes in the activities at CES 2017. “The […]

LAS VEGAS – Is the advertising industry stuck on so-called intermediate metrics when judging the performance of their video campaigns? Oren Harnevo thinks so. The CEO and Co-Founder of Eyeview believes there’s no substitute for actual outcomes, meaning a person sees a video and then buys something. “A lot of the video campaigns you see […]

LAS VEGAS – Creative agencies are managing a transition from a service culture to a knowledge culture. Along the way, the heretofore trusty 30-second television spot has yielded to a continual search for the most appropriate video format and accompanying production budget, according to Troy Ruhanen, the CEO of TBWA. “I think a lot of […]

LAS VEGAS – While running Information Resources Inc. beginning in 1980, Gian Fulgoni had an insider’s view of the consumer research business. With comScore now measuring some 120,000 Internet-connected devices within U.S. households, he sees the future of media research requiring lots of cooperation and less reliance on panels. The company’s technology is now in […]

LAS VEGAS – An oasis is defined as a fertile spot in a desert where water is found. OMD’s Oasis encampment at CES 2017 provides a similar function, but one based more on providing strategic direction than liquid sustenance. “From year to year, the changes are enormous, overwhelming,” observes Monica Karo, the CEO of OMD […]

LAS VEGAS – At CES, media agencies assume the dual role of soothsayer and gardener. That’s because their clients come to the extravaganza with one main objective. “Show me what the future is going to be,” is how Brian Terkelsen, the Global President of Mediavest | Spark, explains it during a break in the activity. […]

Is there such a thing as too much data in advertising and media? Quite possibly, according to the CEO of Havas North America. “I still see an incredible rush to data,” says Colin Kinsella, noting the trend of agency holding companies combining their data assets and building “these incredibly large organizations” around said data. He […]

One expects to see faster chipsets from the NVIDIAs and Qualcomms of the world at CES 2017, plus more dazzling television screens. But for TV programmers, a lot of the action will focus on skinny bundles and trying to figure out how consumers will figure out their individual relationships with entertainment content. This is the […]

A world without friction or seams probably won’t ever happen, even though consumers seek it constantly. In the meantime, marketers need to focus on the technologies that are showing signs of progress, whether it’s with augmented/virtual reality, artificial intelligence or eyeglass video. “I think one of the challenges that we’ve still got with that technology […]

Following a record year for mergers and acquisitions in the digital advertising and media space, “the volume is going to continue” in 2017. That’s the forecast from LUMA Partners Founder & CEO Terry Kawaja, whose advice for startups in the artificial and virtual reality space—plus the Internet of things—is don’t be too early. In an […]

MIAMI – When the subject is unified audience measurement across viewing platforms, expect metaphors to abound. “Putting lipstick on a pig,” “Chicken and the egg” and “Push the envelope” are among them. And so it was during a panel discussion at the recent Beet.TV. Retreat 2016 as a panel of experts from across the video […]

Pure programmatic buying of television ads in a real-time, automated fashion is not happening at any kind of scale today and probably won’t for a few years, according to the Chief Investment Officer for OMD USA. However, “A lot of the benefits from programmatic thinking are starting to come into the marketplace, mostly through the […]

While digital ad viewability probably won’t be the “topic de jure” at CES 2017, GroupM is taking into account modifiers for U.S. feed-based video advertising as it takes its own viewability standards global, according to Chief Digital Officer Rob Norman. “It’s pretty well known that the GroupM viewability standards aren’t met by feed-based environments,” Norman […]

As it prepares for its first CES event in Las Vegas, data and analytics provider 605 will be looking at new video delivery devices slightly differently than programmers. Whereas programmers mostly envision additional viewer fragmentation, 605 sees opportunity to provide measurement solutions. As a “pure data play,” 605 doesn’t sell media or advertising, isn’t a […]

NBC News will continue to roll out vertical, special interest “near news” advertising opportunities going into 2017, the most recent of which is a technological/transformational themed effort called Mach for NBC News. “One of the things we’ve rolled out as part of our quality transformative mission is a vertical strategy,” Alex Duncan, VP of Digital […]

Condé Nast Entertainment—which produces about 5,000 unique premium videos each year—is testing programmatic ad sales in what could be a prelude to a big programmatic push in 2017. It’s a seemingly inevitable path for Condé Nast, having dived into video production just over three years ago for its 19 properties, from GQ to Glamour. “Any […]

First it was desktop, then mobile and now it’s all about the living room at premium video ad management solutions provider FreeWheel. That’s because “This is truly premium viewing experiences,” says SVP of Client Services Mike Lawlor. “It’s lean back, it’s dynamic, it’s highly engaged viewers on 60-inch television screens.” Moreover, it’s “fraud-free, it’s 100% […]

Strategic advisory and business development firm MediaLink is heading to CES 2017 to expose its clients—a mix of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Madison Avenue and Wall Street—to “immersion and experiences in terms of sensations in marketing,” according to President and COO Wenda Harris Millard. If that’s not enough, there also will be disruption, the kind that […]