Steve Ellwanger

LAS VEGAS – Pity the lowly digital video recorder. If media companies like Hulu had their druthers, it would go the way of the hula hoop (sorry Wham-O). It’s no surprise that people like Peter Naylor, Hulu’s SVP of Advertising Sales, have set their sights on the DVR. They see it as a Pleistocene relic […]

CANNES – A palpable sense of frustration was on display at a Carat-sponsored panel that bemoaned the slow pace of the shift to measuring television and video ads based on business outcomes. It started with a simple question from moderator Doug Ray, who is U.S. CEO for Carat: “What do we need to do that […]

LAS VEGAS – With almost 75% of YouTube viewing happening on mobile devices, it’s no surprise that tech giant Google wants to be part of the quest for uniform metrics for cross-platform measurement. Because while it is quick to point out the challenges facing traditional television, the company also benefits from helping advertisers straddle digital […]

CANNES – How many choices television and video content distributors should give viewers in return for fewer or no advertisements—and the various forms those choices can take—drew mixed opinions among a panel of buyers and sellers. If the session hosted by Omnicom’s OMD agency network elicited agreement on one thing, it is that consumers have been […]

CANNES – Spotify wants brands to get intimate with its listeners, because it knows what they are feeling. Artists, meanwhile, can drop in anytime and check out the geographic popularity of their labors. In an interview with Beet.TV at the Cannes Lions festival, where Spotify had a major presence on several panels, Head of Sales […]

CANNES – Progress is being made on measuring cross-platform audience engagement and proving that advertising campaigns on those platforms are working. But the CEO of Carat USA thinks figuring out which creative messaging works best within a given platform should be happening faster. Doug Ray, in an interview with Beet.TV, ticks off his priorities thusly: […]

CANNES – Seems like all of a sudden, everyone’s a storyteller—brands and media companies alike. Not to be left behind, Yahoo Storytellers has made its debut, an effort the company’s Chief Revenue Officer dubs “story telling with an ROI.” In an interview with Beet.TV, Lisa Utzschneider says that as the result of Yahoo having offering […]

CANNES – Amid much soul searching about reducing ad loads to better engage viewers, brand marketers face a fundamental balancing act: formats and advertising mix, according to Andrew Feigenson, Managing Director of Digital for Nielsen. Indeed, total audience planning and measurement will be a major topic as the global company convenes its annual Nielsen Consumer […]

CANNES – Data-driven advertising messaging has helped MasterCard advance from story teller to story maker, a “super exciting” process and ongoing journey for the industry says Ben Jankowski, Group Head of Global Media for the payment solutions provider. Jankowski welcomes the discussion at the Cannes Lions of the evolving meld of creativity and technology. “To […]

CANNES – There’s been lots of meaningful talk about the creative uses of data at the Cannes Lions gathering. But the media executive who represents Oreos and other venerable consumer staples says the “absent conversation” should have been about reaching consumers via digital messaging apps and platforms. To B. Bonin Bough, Chief Media & Commerce […]

CANNES – Believing that so much advertising has become noise, Time Inc. CEO Joe Ripp thinks the best way for advertisers to engage with consumers is to engage with the best story tellers. No surprise that they include magazine editors. In an interview with Beet.TV, Ripp extols the virtues of magazines by citing a recent […]

CANNES – When it comes to selling ads, can web publishers make more money by doing less? The co-founder and CEO of ConvertMedia thinks so, citing a “race to the bottom” with fixed banner ads. Yoav Naveh, who heads the outstream video supply side platform, believes publishers became fixated on fixed banner ad placements, to […]

CANNES – If practitioners in the programmatic advertising space could not only educate creative and media agencies as to the benefits of data and technology but also inspire them, then all parties might just reinvent marketing. This frank assessment from Caspar Schlickum, Co-Founder and CEO of Xaxis EMEA, the WPP Group programmatic unit, came after […]

If self-proclaimed “research geek” Alan Wurtzel could create a new Olympic sport, it might very well be called Synchronized Cross-Platform Measurement. In the walkup to the Summer Games in Rio, the president of Research & Media Development at NBCUniversal says the Olympics are a unique opportunity to glimpse the future behavior of viewers. NBCU has […]

CANNES – What do Taylor Swift and Sarah Palin have in common? They’re both between the ages of 25 and 54—a heretofore one-size-fits all demographic for brands like Special K but a meaningless metric for today’s more precise targeting, says Aaron Fetters, SVP of Marketing Solutions at measurement and analytics provider comScore. Fetters should know […]

CANNES – Noting an “inflection point” involving creativity, data and technology, the chairman of WPP Group’s Xaxis programmatic unit has this message for the creative community: Give us as many levers as you can to help us optimize advertising campaigns. “Creativity has been a little behind in terms of taking advantage of all the data […]

CANNES – CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who likes to tell “other peoples’ stories”—sans teleprompter—has some advice for a generation that has access to lots of information: take the time to learn where it’s coming from. Whether it’s the ongoing news story about the mass shootings in Orlando or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Cooper wants […]

CANNES – Original CNN programs like “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” and “The Hunt with John Walsh” has given the network “an entirely new dimension”—along with a whole new audience and advertiser slate, says CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker. In an interview with Beet.TV, Zucker says that CNN “is a very different network than it was […]

CANNES – The advertising industry’s reaction to a report critical of advertising and media agencies that the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) believes pad their compensation via non-transparent tactics continued with a testy waterfront exchange here. It’s a subject that won’t be going away soon. Beet.TV was present for the contentious discussion sponsored by Rubicon […]

CANNES – Reducing the commercial load in television programming is “a heavy topic,” says the chief investment officer at global media agency OMD, and while he welcomes experimentation he wonders whether people will even notice. “There’s a lot of discussion here about having one fewer pod in an hour-long show,” Ben Winkler says in an […]