The idea of assembling a different ad, from multiple constituent pieces of content, for each individual audience member, depending on their targetable characteristics, goes back some way. Somehow, though, "dynamic creative optimization" (DCO) never quite seemed to hit prime-time - until now. After years on the sidelines, suddenly ad industry executives are back talking about DCO. Arguably that is because the last few [...]

A big conundrum in cross-screen audience targeting is the need for cooperation across a multitude of potential partners even as the number of partners continues to multiply. And technology itself isn’t the white knight it was once thought of, judging from a panel discussion at the recent Beet.TV leadership forum. The panel titled Making Identity a Reality in a Multi-Screen World [...]

Having to innovate and “re-innovate” is nothing new at FreeWheel, which Diane Yu helped to create in 2007 after leaving Google/DoubleClick. But even the CTO herself is rather amazed at the company’s evolution to a platform serving both buyers and sellers. “Thinking back 12 years ago, I wouldn’t imagine that we’re doing the FreeWheel NOWFRONT,” Yu says of the company’s recent [...]

ORLANDO—Video game giant Electronic Arts didn’t decide overnight to buy media in-house across more than 40 countries. Building an in-house capability can start with baby steps, dipping your toe into the waters and, along the way, nurturing your talent so as to avoid “tissue rejection,” says EA Global Head of Media Belinda Smith. After buying media in-house in one capacity or [...]

ORLANDO—Not that long ago, in-house agencies were where “old creatives went to die because they were done with the advertising industry. That has definitely shifted,” says the VP and COO of 140, Verizon’s in-house agency. Now, because in-house talent at companies like Verizon are in close in proximity to corporate leadership, among other factors, “that is attracting creatives because they get [...]

Around the world, news organizations are being caught in a perilous pincer movement. On the one hand, many consumers are now ebbing away from classical news outlets, instead getting their information through social platforms. On the other, advertisers are following suit - alarmed at either the consumer migration or the increasingly downbeat tenor of news stories in 2019, or both. You may not [...]

Amid the push for more performance-based advertising campaign outcomes from deterministic consumer identities, Horizon Media is building its own identity solution. “With the help of our partners, we can now attach that ID to build the deterministic ID. That’s going to allow us to advertise more one to one and get more toward people based marketing if you will and [...]

Marketers that are seeking to better understand consumers’ identities need to start by earning consumer trust and then build platforms that are “privacy by design” were two main takeaways from a panel at the recent Beet.TV leadership forum. It seems likely there won’t be one central identity graph for each person judging from comments by Matthew Krepsik, Nielsen's Global Head of [...]

One of the main purposes of FreeWheel’s recent NOWFRONT event was to formally announce FreeWheel Media, its new media sales division. The “now” is a reference to educating the market on “what you can do today” in the advanced-television space,” says FreeWheel Markets GM Neil Smith. While FreeWheel has long built and maintained a technology platform connecting its publisher customers—mainly TV [...]

One was launched seven years ago, bringing targeted TV ads to individual households before the practice was even known as "addressable". The other appeared in 2016, tying together four suites for buying ads across devices. Now Comcast is merging NBCUniversal's Audience Studio with Sky's AdSmart, after the owner acquired the European pay-TV company last year. In this interview recorded in London in December, [...]

Omnicom Media Group’s Jonathan Steuer is encouraged by the emergence of solutions that “co-mingle” set-top box and automatic content recognition viewing data, the most recent example of which is FreeWheel Media working with Inscape. At the recent FreeWheel NOWFRONT event in Manhattan, Steuer, who is Chief Research Officer, welcomed the “consistent effort across almost all of the networks and network groups [...]

FreeWheel is bringing in-flight advertising campaign attribution optimization across traditional television, OTT and digital video via a partnership with Data Plus Math. “When we work with FreeWheel, we’re really measuring FreeWheel’s inventory,” says John Hoctor, Co-Founder & CEO of Data Plus Math. What Data Plus Math brings to Comcast’s FreeWheel is “a fast, automated and low-cost attribution provider,” Hoctor adds in [...]

A few short years ago, few could have predicted that Game Of Thrones, Wolf Blitzer, basketball stars and broadband infrastructure engineers would be rubbing shoulders in the same company. But that's what the modern AT&T - incorporating WarnerMedia's Turner and CNN - now looks like. For the corporation - like Verizon alongside it - it is part of an ambitious move to [...]

In the emerging world of targeted marketing, knowing your customers and prospects is becoming essential. As that importance grows, so does the position of companies offering identity "graphs", records of consumer profiles. In this panel discussion at Beet.TV's Identity In Focus leadership forum, two ad agency executives discuss how identity is being pieced together by both graph vendors and brands themselves. Prohaska Consulting [...]

A continuing theme on the demand side is the desire to know how digital media and television can best work together. It boils down to “a need for more consistency and better fluency between the different measured media,” says Nielsen’s Jessica Hogue. It’s commonly expressed as how does digital media complement or overlap reach, Hogue, who is SVP of Digital Client [...]

It is best known as the company which brought you out-stream, the video advertising format which serves auto-playing video advertising between text paragraphs in news stories. But Teads doesn't want to be a one-trick pony. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jim Daily, Teads president, explains how the vendor is branching out from out-stream. "That's what people have known us for traditionally," Daily says. [...]

Comcast’s FreeWheel has new partnerships with Data Plus Math, Vizio’s Inscape data unit and Adobe to augment its attribution, consumer insights and programmatic offerings. In this interview with Beet.TV, FreeWheel Media’s Brian Wallach explains the three deals announced at the FreeWheel NOWFRONT event in Manhattan this week. FreeWheel is teaming with Data Plus Math and other attribution solutions providers to deliver [...]

Viacom wants to help deliver TV ads that are targeted at individual viewers. It just needs three industry challenges to be overcome first. Back in 2015, Viacom was one of the first broadcast owners to sell ads based on data about advertisers’ audiences. The product it launched to do that was called Vantage, and is now also used by rivals like Fox In this [...]

Smart-TV manufacturer Vizio is teaming up with nine major media and technology companies to create an addressable advertising standard for the industry. Along with Vizio and its data unit Inscape, the consortium’s members are AMC Networks, CBS, Discovery, FreeWheel, Hearst Television, NBCUniversal, The Walt Disney Co. and Xandr, as Reuters reports. Called Project OAR (Open Addressable Ready), the participants will define technical [...]

Every new breakthrough in understanding television viewer identities creates more complexity for buyers. A case in point is being able to use set-top box data to show how linear TV viewing impacts other media and advertisers’ business outcomes, as underscored by a panel discussion at the recent Beet.TV leadership forum titled Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a [...]