SAN JUAN -- It was billed as the revolution for television ad sales - the emerging prospect of using internet-connected platforms and audience viewing data to plan, execute and measure TV ad campaigns in real-time. After all, "programmatic" advertising unleashed "real-time bidding" (RTB) on to the world several years ago now. Today, real-time auctions for display ads are commonplace and many [...]

SAN JUAN -- Ad spending on over-the-top (OTT) TV was expected to increase 40% to $2 billion in 2018, with addressable TV spend reaching $800 million, according to Magna. That means spending on addressable TV - with which buyers can use advanced data and return path to more precisely target viewers and households - would represent only around 1.1% of total US TV [...]

SAN JUAN -- If you listen to the tech crowd and if you look at some of the consumer behavior, TV is "dying". But, if that is the case, how do you explain Netflix? Many executives in the industry have long since moved on from using "TV" to describe the box in the living room connected to an antenna, with many choosing the [...]

SAN JUAN -- For decades, the notion of return on investment from TV ads has been ironically straightforward. Brands would buy ads and, with little insight in to who really watched what, would need to unleash a slew of media mix modelling tools to understand what exposures may have led to which purchases. That imprecision has led the industry to focus on [...]

SAN JUAN, PR -- The Beet Retreat gala dinner and fundraiser at the 400-year old San Cristobal Fort was the subject of this news segment on the San Juan/CBS affiliate station. The event raised funds for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico.   Many thanks to the the U.S. Park Service for welcoming us and to the dinner sponsor Amobee and [...]

LAS VEGAS -- CES may have been a tech show and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) may have been established to advocate digital advertising - but there is a growing school of thought that suggests digital brands need good 'ol TV, too. In this video interview with Beet.TV, IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg says he sees an "explosive opportunity for television networks" - [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Whether it’s Cambridge Analytica or Starwood Resorts, messy and highly publicized consumer data controversies impact every company dependent on such data—regardless of their own practices. This was one of the main takeaways from a panel discussion at the recent Beet Retreat 2018 whose participants represented smart-TV data collector Inscape, analytics and measurement provider iSpot.tv and Nielsen Catalina [...]

LAS VEGAS -- CES may be thought of as a technology show, but there is one kind of technology product that dependably still takes center-stage at the event - televisions. In Las Vegas, Beet.TV found technology executives eager to say that, despite growing industry concern at changing viewer behavior, TV still has unique qualities. But they also said now is the [...]

LAS VEGAS—As Xandr Media begins to cross-pollinate data and technology with Turner and other AT&T family entities, it wants the outside world to know that from a supply-side platform standpoint, its doors are open. “The welcome mat is out. It’s got neon lights around it,” says Xandr Media President Rick Welday. Roughly four months after AT&T unveiled Xandr, the company announced [...]

LAS VEGAS—The continued rise of streaming services providing premium video without advertising avails is a big concern but it’s going to change within a couple of years. That’s because both Amazon and Netflix are headed toward ad-supported content, VMLY&R chairman David Sable predicts. The bottom line, Sable explains in this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2019, is that TV advertising will [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Fully IP-based television may be inevitable, but fully programmatic buying and selling of advertising inventory isn’t, according to buy- and sell-side executives who converged for a panel discussion at the recent Beet Retreat 2018. Moderated by consultant Matt Prohaska, the discussion touched on the eternal reality of supply versus demand in making sales decisions, along with the prospects [...]

SAN JUAN -- It's now 13 years since the phrase "data is the new oil", it is believed, was first uttered. Now we are living in a world which is swimming - or, perhaps, drowning - in the sticky, digital substance. For many in broadcasting, data is proving to be transformational to the way they sell advertising, reinventing a discipline that has [...]

LAS VEGAS—Even with all the advances being made in targeting television audiences and automating parts of the selling process, the annual ritual known as the Upfront isn’t going away anytime soon. “I think the Upfront’s still going to be very important for at least a few more years if not even beyond, for a very specific purpose,” says NBCUniversal’s Tony [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—As an after-school organization that provides supplemental education services to 15,000 mostly impoverished youths, Boys and Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico found itself in the crosshairs of Hurricane Maria. “Before the storm, we already had a storm in the education sector, so with the storm it gets more complicated,” said President Olga Ramos in an update to [...]

SAN JUAN -- It is the technology that can laser-target an ad at individual TV viewers or households, and then control how many more ads get seen across TV and other media. But what is the state of "addressable" television? A Beet Retreat panel convened by Beet.TV in Puerto Rico discussed that topic. Slow addressable adoption? The debate kicked off with some data [...]

SAN JUAN -- It did it once before in an earlier media era, so can cable groups' joint sales group tackle another wave of ad platform fragmentation? Operated by Comcast, Charter and Cox Communications, NCC Media launched in 1981 to provide a common way for ad buyers to get on to disparate and disconnected cable, satellite and now telco networks. In this Beet [...]

SAN JUAN -- Spending $52.4 billion to acquire 21st Century Fox would be pretty transformational by anyone's standards. For Disney, the acquisition a year ago added to an already-broad portfolio of assets, and came right as the company was figuring out a direct-to-consumer SVOD strategy and learning to get to grips with a whole new world of advertising capabilities. In this Beet Retreat [...]

Procter & Gamble’s Gillette brand today breaks a new campaign titled “We Believe” aimed at curbing "toxic masculinity." Coming 30 years after Gillette introduced its “The Best a Man Can Get” campaign, it encourages men to help stop harassment, bullying, stereotyping, diminishing and objectification. “We Believe defies the convention that ‘boys will be boys,’ which is just an excuse for bad [...]

LAS VEGAS—As television sets continue to grow in size along with the trend toward big-screen viewing, “it’s an exciting universe” that’s attracting a new crop of marketers as TV advertising gets smarter, according to Linda Yaccarino. “We feel great. It’s really a time of technology sophistication where it’s intersecting with creativity,” says the Chairman of Advertising Sales & Client Partnerships at [...]

LAS VEGAS—Having long attended CES in the partner mode, Procter & Gamble chose this year to be an exhibitor at what Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard dubs the “consumer experience show.” It’s where the company is showcasing some of the technologically advanced products that have emerged from the approximately 130 internal “seed-stage startups” that the 181-year-old marketing giant has developed [...]