Over the last two years, we saw how many advertisers - deterred by an increasingly down-beat news agenda - were turning their dollars away from news itself, with some buyers even blacklisting news sites. Now the publishers are getting more vocal, however. In recent months, we have heard from the likes of BBC News, News Corp and The Economist and now Vice Media protest that news is actually [...]

LAS VEGAS -- When Beet.TV has been asking media industry figures lately about the promise of going "direct-to-consumer", most have talked about e-commerce brands that no longer require retailers or marketers that no longer depend on intermediary publishers. But Rohit Thawani has something altogether more creative in mind. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, the digital experiences lead at the creative agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab [...]

LAS VEGAS—Now that the Tubi streaming movie and television service is “across everywhere,” it’s hoping that subscription fatigue helps it continue to be an advertising-supported complement to Netflix in the face of mounting streaming competition. “Before us there was YouTube and Netflix and that was it,” says Chief Revenue Officer Mark Rotblat. “We are across all the major platforms, eighteen of [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—There was no playbook for the advertising and media community in Puerto Rico to help itself—much less consumers—deal with Hurricane Maria in 2017. But until such a template exists, the lessons related by AT&T, Hearts & Science, Procter & Gamble and Telemundo at Beet Retreat 2018 provide more than an ample starting place for the future. AT&T used [...]

Please join me, your colleagues and executives from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico for an update on the island's children and the essential work of the Clubs. Tuesday: February 5 at Xandr/AT&T 1 Rockefeller Plaza, 5th Floor 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. The program will include an update on the island and an overview of the work of the [...]

LAS VEGAS -- At the recent Beet Retreat, Beet.TV heard several ad industry executives grumble that advertisers' commitment to spending in advanced digital television environments was still experimental. But, if addressable TV ad spend is still small-scale, it may be a function as much of available ad space and success proof as of ad buyers' reluctance. In this video interview with Beet.TV [...]

LAS VEGAS—As major media companies prepare to offer consumers more direct-streaming video choices, they should be thinking about improving content search and viewing recommendations, according to Turner’s David Beck. Success will hinge on “Who makes it easy, frictionless for people to get to the content they want to, consume it, share it and engage with it,” says the EVP of [...]

LAS VEGAS -- The uber model for marketing strategy has been that of a funnel, through which a mass audience's interest gets ignited by awareness-raising branding ads, eventually leading down to performance outcomes like sales. But new digital platforms are collapsing the marketing funnel as we witness the emergence of ad units which tick both boxes. That is the view of Twitter's VP [...]

While Marc Pritchard would like to see more of a balance between positive and negative news coverage, Procter & Gamble maintains a presence on a variety of news programs. It’s also leveraging broader and more in depth news content in the form of deals with CNN’s Great Big Story and Katie Couric Media. “Marketers need to be part of the news [...]

LAS VEGAS—Two years ago, NBCUniversal began to gauge viewers’ emotional states to create better audience segmentations. Now it’s using artificial intelligence that places the most appropriate ads within the most appropriate scenes within its shows. Its goal is to “evolve the consumer experience of watching live, primetime television into a better experience because we know that they have an immense amount [...]

Programmatic technology may have grown up transacting remnant display ad inventory, but its increasing application to deliver ads to TV screens looks a world away from the advanced tech's humble beginnings. In this video interview with Beet.TV, video publisher ad tech maker Telaria's CEO Mark Zagorski says that "premium" publishers of video that reaches the living room demand a particular threshold [...]

LAS VEGAS—With a “nice running start” of 11 years in the streaming video wars, Hulu is beta testing an attribution offering to correlate advertising exposures to advertisers’ business outcomes. Hulu announced the offering at CES 2019 as it revealed a subscriber base of 25 million, representing “pretty dramatic growth” of eight million year-over-year, SVP of Advertising Sales Peter Naylor says [...]

LAS VEGAS—It was hard to miss brands like Subaru and Metro by T-Mobile during last fall’s People’s Choice Awards on NBCUniversal’s E!. And that was the point of E!’s first-ever broadcast of the age-old show, which harnessed social media to distribute advertiser content far and wide, according to Advertising Sales & Partnerships President Laura Molen. While the People’s Choice Awards had [...]

If advertisers want to be seen alongside news content, they need to employ simple and genuine messaging. But there’s lots of room beyond that type of content in the broader category of “news” to provide useful information that many people are seeking, according to Omnicom’s Catherine Sullivan. “The news environment is a little tricky right now,” says the President of [...]

LAS VEGAS--With an online following and six stores in major U.S. cities and its own magazine, luggage marketer Away’s products have “a utility for a really wide swath of people.” But being a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand, it hasn’t reached enough of those people so it’s looking farther up the purchase funnel by way of television. “There’s a functional need for [...]

LAS VEGAS—Hardware is still a big topic of conversation at CES, but Mindshare’s Adam Gerhart would rather talk about “the customization and utilization of televisions and devices” and the resulting addressability for advertisers. In this interview with Beet.TV, U.S. CEO Gerhart discusses the “perfect balance” between TV’s scale and addressability along with the challenge that accompanies the need for increasing amounts [...]

LAS VEGAS -  A huge thank you Sarah Hofstetter, Bryan Wiener and the Comscore crew for hosting an awesome party at the Cosmopolitan on my birthday (1/8) and to celebrate Beet.TV's thirteenth year.  Thirteen, a milestone in digital publishing, maybe?   A reason enough for a party, why not! I was honored that so many good friends from our industry joined us.  [...]

LAS VEGAS--At this stage of cross-platform advertising, Nielsen has positioned itself to comparable advertising measurement components. It’s up to the industry to solve “for those sets of rules that pulls the measurement together,” says Nielsen Global Media President Megan Clarken. The end goal is “how you can get a holistic view from television viewing across the same audiences across different platforms [...]

SAN JUAN -- How long should a commercial break be? How lengthy should a TV ad be? And how many is too many? Over the last 18 months, TV networks have wrestled with that question, as booming VOD subscriptions has gone hand-in-hand with growing consumer frustration toward excess interruption. That has spurred many networks to rip up and re-shape the norm for [...]

SAN JUAN -- The value promised by connected TV systems offering addressable advertising always seemed to be that ad buyers could precision-target the viewer they want to reach. So why are so many advertisers either spending so little or using addressable for a different purpose? In this panel discussion at Beet Retreat, a cast of "millennial"-aged companies assembled to discuss issues affecting [...]