Steve Ellwanger

The leader in addressable television advertising, with some 13 million households, AT&T is using a humorous commercial during the TV Upfront negotiating season to sell the power of addressable while speaking to concerns about its cost and scale. The commercial, “Stop Showing the Right Product to the Wrong Customer,” offers up three vignettes: a grownup […]

Almost a decade into its work with addressable television, Cablevision Systems Corp has learned that long-tail networks can greatly over index the biggest networks for reaching audiences with particular attributes and that not all households want scented products. The key takeaway for Ben Tatta, President of Cablevision Media Sales, is that addressable TV is not […]

With digital technology helping to advance the goal of more precisely targeted television ads, the traditional marketing mix of art and science has become more balanced with regard to the scientific element. For Yin Woon Rani, VP of U.S. Marketing for Campbell’s, the advent of digital advertising has raised marketers’ expectations of what is measurable, […]

With very specific need-based and seasonal consumer targets for its Zicam family of cold and allergy relief products, Matrixx Initiatives puts a portion of its media spend into buys made outside of the traditional big demographic television data blocks. The company is assisted in this targeting effort by Simulmedia, along with sales and incidence data […]

True cross-platform digital video advertising deals can emerge only when agencies change the way they now plan and buy content for their clients, according to Bloomberg Media’s David Bickford. “If you buy a spot on TV you are trafficking that spot,” Bickford says in a recent interview with Beet.TV. “But a digital video purchase is […]

LAS VEGAS – IBM Cloud wants to be right in the middle of everything that’s happening in digital video, an aspiration further advanced by this week’s deals with companies like AOL and the Canadian Broadcasting Company, along with the launch of two new live-streaming services. The company best known for its mainframe computer heritage is […]

LAS VEGAS – When it comes to pay television and “TV Everywhere,” the only constant is disruption, one of the latest examples being Facebook Live, which enables anyone to broadcast live video on the social media platform. As an official Media Solutions Partner for Facebook Live, Silicon Valley-based Ooyala has a ground-level view of the […]

MIAMI – Recruiting young talent to advertising and media agencies and holding onto them is no longer like “catching fish in a barrel” than it is offering mentoring and coaching—things that don’t always come with today’s flexible freelance work mode. As agencies compete for talent with tech companies and their own brand marketers, which continue […]

MIAMI – Like many things in this age, talent rights compliance tracking has taken to the cloud to ensure that television commercials increasingly repurposed as video ads deliver payments to all people and entities involved in those ads. Tagging commercials in order to track them is “a no brainer,” says Melinda McLaughlin, CMO of Extreme Reach, […]

MIAMI – When it rains it pours, and the advertising world is not immune to being drenched with pressing issues, ranging from keeping its young talent not only diverse but also happy to regaining trust with its brand marketer clients. And so it was as the industry’s dominant trade organization, the American Association of Advertising […]

Matching advertising creative to real people—to the tune of about one trillion algorithmic decisions each day—is the best way to decide not to advertise snow jackets to someone who is vacationing in the South. By the same token, you might assume it’s not wise to advertise a bikini online to a woman who is shopping […]

Political campaigns are at the forefront of combining linear and addressable television, with the latter’s frequent messaging changes bringing a whole new tempo to advertising on the medium. “It’s fascinating that of all the categories we work with, political probably is the most sophisticated in terms of the use of the data,” Ben Tatta, President, […]

The ability to coordinate audience reach and frequency between social media and television—typified by the partnership of Facebook and Simulmedia—represents a “transitional point” to Fox Broadcasting in its quest to reach the best prospects for its programming. While attending the annual PeopleFront event conducted by Simulmedia, Fox’s EVP of Marketing, Laurel Bernard, likes the reasoning […]

Tim Spengler, who has been buying media at major advertising and media agencies since the 1980’s, says data supporting the placement of television ads used to be “a blunt instrument” but doesn’t have to be anymore because of the more granular data now available. Still settling into his role as CEO of Fuisz Video, spent […]

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) has a simple message for brand marketers wondering about the return on investment of their advertising dollars: the more platforms the better. And it has more than a decade of research to prove it. Among the ARF’s How Advertising Works initiatives is what it calls its Ground Truth experiments, one of which […]

As Northeast cable giant Cablevision Systems completes the rollout of dedicated channel access to Hulu across its entire subscriber footprint, it’s another step in the evolution of data-driven advertising delivery. Since the deal was announced a year ago, Hulu has been available as channel 605 only in select Cablevision service areas. Now that all of […]

Nielsen’s recently announced deal to glean audience data from DISH Network will give advertisers a more granular look at who’s watching television programs—particularly lower-rated shows—and who is being exposed to commercials, according to Nielsen President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Hasker. Nielsen is getting return path data from some 13 million households that are DISH […]

MIAMI – On the cusp of its 100th anniversary, leadership at the American Association of Advertising Agencies is trying to foster more collaboration among ad agencies, media owners and other suppliers. “We all need each other,” says Chairman Bill Koenigsberg. The equally brief message from Koenigsberg, who in addition to his Four A’s role is […]

MIAMI – Now is a critical time for advertisers and publishers to advance best practices in dealing with consumer use of ad blocking technology because the growth of digital media won’t always outpace the growth in ad blocking. Donnie Williams, Chief Digital Officer of media agency Horizon, cites data showing there are 200 million global […]

MIAMI – When agencies and clients get sidetracked with each other over business issues they can become disconnected with consumers, a phenomenon not unlike the ongoing presidential election campaigns within the Republican Party. This worldview comes from Chris Weil, CEO of the global brand Interpublic agency Momentum, as he takes in the early sessions at […]