CANNES -- European broadcasters know they desperately want to enable the delivery of so-called addressable TV advertising, the advertising tactic which allows custom ad swap-outs targeted at individual households or viewers. But two of Europe's biggest markets actually have limits on the practice: In Germany, strict privacy regulation means broadcasters can't use personal information to target ads, ProSiebenSat.1 is using probabilistic [...]

CANNES – Across Europe, in multiple media industries, what once were competitors are coming together, forming a variety of ad sales cooperatives in a bid to pool inventory they hope can match the vast scale of Google and Facebook. That is stark contrast to the US, where many media houses remain in competition with both each other and the tech giants. But [...]

CANNES -- In the year of its tenth anniversary, and after five years working on the technology, Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) is bolting on machine learning to some of its existing services. NCS is the unit which uses consumer data to help consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies target ads more effectively. Coinciding with Cannes Lions, it announced it would add machine learning [...]

CANNES - Over-the-top (OTT) TV viewing is exploding. Now OTT operators need to see their advertising revenue increase at the same pace. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Tariq Mahmoud, Roku head of international sales and strategy, describes a disconnect he expects will be closed in the next few years. 'There's this delta right now between OTT viewing and OTT ad spend," [...]

The collection of modern, automated ad trading practices known as “programmatic” may seem to sit squarely with natively digital media and with on-demand video. But, little by little, other platforms are getting lit up with these new tricks, too - even good 'ol linear TV. "On the linear side, (we) really have been focused on 'How do we apply that programmatic mindset [...]

CANNES -- When Comcast acquired European satellite TV provider Sky last year, it didn't just get a leading continental telco and TV operator; it also got one of the world’s earliest addressable TV pioneers. Sky launched AdSmart back in 2014, using its own customer data to analyze viewers on advertisers’ behalf and sending household-specific linear TV ads to their set-top boxes – one [...]

CANNES—As a caretaker of the world’s eighth-largest brand, Tencent’s CY Lau believes that marketers must be both the ultimate trustees of brand legacy and “defenders of consumers.” As a member of the “Group of 25” under the aegis of the CMO Growth Council, Lau is hoping to create “congregations of marketing organizations” to restablish the importance of marketing, he explains in [...]

CANNES -- Over the last year, one new set of technology has risen in ad-tech buzzphrase prominence - the "identity graph'. But, what is an identity graph and why does it matter? Simply, an identity graph is the collection of data points from disparate devices that, when pieced together, add up to indicate a single person's holistic media behavior. Identity resolution is the [...]

CANNES -- In the rapidly-expanding kingdom of AT&T, Xandr, its unit for facilitating advanced TV ad buying, is playing a stronger role. Almost exactly a year after AT&T acquired ad-tech platform AppNexus, it has just rebadged AppNexus' demand-side platform (DSP) as "Xandr Invest", and allowed ad buyers to to target viewers using AT&T's first-party data and its new Community premium video [...]

CANNES—Not all programmers face the same issues when it comes to simplifying cross-screen, advanced advertising. This was readily apparent in a panel discussion with executives from Fox and Univision at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. What also came to the fore in this segment recorded at the Beet.TV advanced TV summit and presented by Amobee and hosted by [...]

CANNES -- If you thought that putting up a news paywall shut out advertisers, think again. Time after time, newspapers which have made the switch - at least, the big ones - have hailed a stronger offering for advertising brands, not a diluted one. That has been one discovery of Joy Robins, four months after joining The Washington Post as chief revenue officer, [...]

CANNES -- In 2019, "brand safety" is still a watchword for ad buyers who want to place their ads against the right kinds of content, and not get tripped up by cringeworthy juxtapositions. That is why MediaMath, a digital ad-buying platform, has just teamed up with IRIS.TV, a video technology vendor, to provide a "sentiment score" brands can use in their [...]

CANNES—Sensing that “convergence was finally emerging” on the buy- and sell-side of the cross-platform universe, Amobee placed a bet last year with its acquisition of Videology. “Timing is everything,” Amobee Chief Strategy Officer Philip Smolin said at the 2019 Cannes Lions Beet advanced TV leadership event. There was no doubt that consumers had completely changed their viewing television venues, but that [...]

Most viewers have never heard of it, but it is one of the biggest TV production houses in the world - and now Fremantle Media is also becoming an ad sales vehicle. Fremantle, owned by the RTL Group of Europe, produces hit entertainment franchises like American Idol, Britain's Got Talent and The X-Factor. Mostly, of course, those shows are sold to TV networks around the [...]

CANNES—“All TV is back, and back in a different way than in the past,” says Accor Group’s Antoine Dubois. So a year ago, the French global hospitality brand returned to TV to complement its targeting of niche audiences beyond digital media. “All of the hospitality industry today, six years ago everything was digital,” the SVP of Global Marketing Strategy says in [...]

CANNES—For global oil and gas conglomerate Shell, using social media influencers is all about generating positive brand perceptions. “These are ultimately the measure of success,” says Americo Silva, Global Head of Integrated Brand & Communications. Visit the Shell website and you won’t see promotions for the company’s liquid products. Instead, the issue of climate change takes center stage. And so it [...]

CANNES— Longtime workplace diversity and inclusion champion Tiffany Warren likes the progress that the advertising industry has made with its workforce but says keeping them happy is the big challenge going forward. “The pipeline is fine. We have people who are interested and want to come into the business,” says the SVP and Chief Diversity Officer at Omnicom. “But are they [...]

The UK's leading commercial TV broadcaster has upped its commitment to programmatic TV and video ad sales, in a move that sees it partner with a big ad-tech supplier. The broadcaster, which airs Downton Abbey and Coronation Street in the UK, recently picked Amobee as the platform through which it will distribute its digital ad inventory. The UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, ITV announced an exclusive [...]

CANNES - Building the infrastructure required to deliver addressable TV ad campaigns at scale is a "10-year sprint" for the man charged with doing that for the world's biggest media agency holding group. But Jakob Nielsen is having the time of his life. In 2017, WPP's GroupM launched Finecast, aiming to “help advertisers address hard-to-reach TV viewers through a single access point [...]

CANNES  -- In the age when brand marketers can use cloud-based tools to carry out many of the functions of their media agencies, the prospect of disintermediation seems to pose a risk to the historic agency model. Omnicom Group media agency OMD understands that risk. Its global CEO Florian Adamski raised eyebrows around his company back in February when he was [...]