Steve Ellwanger

Faced with a “fast and furious” proliferation of digital advertising formats, agencies and marketers must contemplate less ad interruptions while figuring out how to give consumers what they really want. “Call that branded content, brand-created, something other than advertising,” says Zak Treuhaft, President of Omnicom’s Hearts & Science agency. Mobile in particular is characterized by […]

In the race among advertisers seeking efficient television ratings points amid media inflation, it pays to own a trifecta. For Cadent, that trio is cable, advanced TV and the recent addition of broadcast inventory to its offerings. “So many advertisers are having a tough time competing in this marketplace,” Jim Tricarico, CRO of Cadent Network, […]

Simplicity, transparency and scale aren’t natural bedfellows in a world of multi-platform television viewing and audience fragmentation. Corralling all three to benefit advertisers and pay TV providers was the strategy behind last year’s joining of BlackArrow and Cadent under the Cross MediaWorks umbrella. Some 14 months later, BlackArrow and Cadent serve a combined 200 pay […]

While the term “high fidelity” is a relic of 1950’s audio recordings, higher fidelity is one of the potential benefits of cross-screen addressable advertising, says the president of Omnicom’s fledgling Hearts & Science agency. Zak Treuhaft also hears echoes of the early digital media era in the industry wide desire to target consumers wherever they happen […]

The combination of data and technology is bringing some of the best practices developed in digital programmatic advertising to the television-buying world. That same melding when applied to cross-platform targeting affords media planners the ability “to understand consumers wherever they are,” says Evan Hanlon of GroupM North America. What they have in common is two […]

WASHINGTON, D.C.-When can digital media be its own worst enemy? In the heat of an election cycle, when time is finite and decisions are made minute-to-minute by lots of people who don’t always agree. This is when organizational structure is critical to political campaigns—from their agencies to their data suppliers and tech partners, was the […]

“It’s not the wild, wild West but it’s close to it,” is how Magna NA’s chief David Cohen sees the present cross-device, addressable video advertising landscape. The challenge is coming up with a standardized way of targeting and measuring the results. “It’s the front that I think will get the most amount of effort, interest […]

The ability to target individual consumers with ads across digital devices and specific households via television is progressing well on parallel tracks. Just when those two paths will converge from a data standpoint is anyone’s guess. “Right now, that data doesn’t exist in a co-mingled way or in a way that would allow us to […]

Although Richard McDonald calls data the “soup de jour of the marketing world right now,” Epsilon Agency has been stirring this particular pot for a very long time. Almost 35 years ago, it created Apple’s first customer/mail order database. Now it’s helping drive millennials to places like Cracker Barrel with geo-fencing technology. Along the way, […]

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Political candidates aren’t the only humans capable of saying one thing and then doing another. While many a campaign’s media strategists talk a great game about harnessing digital ads and programmatic television to target voters with less waste, there’s a big disconnect from what they actually do. This sentiment was echoed by all three […]

Never a dull moment at the Internet Advertising Bureau, and 2016 is no exception. Of three key themes codified in January, better user ad experience and more precision in consumer targeting have seen healthy uptake, while the desire to add 10,000 jobs in a diversity push is understandably a longer haul. “I’m very proud of […]

Call it cross-channel or cross-platform addressability. To Bank of America’s Lou Paskalis, it comes down to “orchestration.” But he wonders whether marketers are up to the challenge of adding value to spontaneous consumer experiences in what could amount to a long-tail investment commitment. “Let’s call it what it really is. Orchestration. I think it’s the […]

Since unveiling its Audience Engine platform about five months ago, Experian Marketing Services has created more than 1,200 audiences for addressable television campaigns. While addressable TV is limited in scale, the data involved are being used to help inform national campaigns. “It’s always going to be one part of the media mix. But the beauty […]

Is virtual the new reality in advertising? That’s what the Internet Advertising Bureau set out to determine when it recently consulted 24 top marketers, publishers, VR software experts and developer platform executives. “We decided that there’s a lot of interest and hype around VR so we wanted to see if there’s a there there,” Anna […]

There’s enough disruption in digital advertising, so a flap at Facebook and uncertainty surrounding Twitter are best dealt with quickly. That’s the view of Mainardo de Nardis, CEO of OMD Worldwide, Omnicom’s global media communications agency. Last month, Facebook apologized after major agencies became aware that the social media behemoth had erred in the way […]

The integration of Verizon Digital Media Services with AOL and Yahoo is “just the beginning” of a path that could see VDMS build its own dynamic ad decisioning technology. Until then, the company is happy to be agnostic with its integration decisions, says President Ralf Jacob. “A lot of people have asked why AOL, why […]

COLOGNE-Being a big ship that cannot turn quickly is not a ship you want to be piloting when it comes to technology platforms, according to Diane Yu, CTO and one of three co-founders of premium video solutions provider FreeWheel. Unless you are agile enough to grow while anticipating all customers’ demands, “You then fall behind […]

WASHINGTON, D.C.-It’s common wisdom that the growth of programmatic television advertising has been constrained less by technology than by the difficulty in herding together all the players that own the inventory. But at a more basic level, human instinct is in play. There are a “lot of different actors on a lot of different levels,” […]

WASHINGTON, D.C.-When competitors DISH and DIRECTV came together in 2014 to offer addressable television advertising solely for political campaigns, early takers were traditional TV buyers. But in the 2016 election cycle, digital buyers wanted in. “I was amazed at how quick the political ad agencies were to accept this and to want to use” D2 […]

Buoyed by trial campaigns involving major brands and its own advertising spend, AT&T has big plans for expanding its addressable cross-platform offerings. By year’s end, its targeted ad solutions will encompass nearly 14 million addressable television households, more than 30 million mobile devices and new inventory within its DIRECTV app. In an interview with Beet.TV, […]