SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Assisted by tutors who act as both companions and mentors, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico has elevated its traditional after-school homework assistance. “We’ve added art, STEM opportunities plus English and math,” says the organization’s President, Olga Ramos. “Our main objective at the Boys and Girls Clubs is to make sure that we change the [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Add to the lexicon of industry terminology the concept of “purchase-driven planning,” fueled by shopper loyalty data and cross-channel advertising campaign measurement. “We’re very lucky to have access to both the Catalina loyalty card data and the Nielsen media and panel data that we can use for attribution,” says Matt O’Grady, CEO of Nielsen Catalina Solutions. In fact, [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—When disruptors like Google and Uber want to reach consumers one on one, “they buy an ad on broadcast television,” says local-TV sales veteran and VP of Sales at Videa Archie Gianunzio. Now what local broadcasters need to do is make it as easy for their advertiser customers to deal with them as the disruptors have. “We’re still [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—To independent video supply-side platform Beachfront Media, it’s all about technology and transparency. “We look at the SSP as something that needs to be sort of independent of both the media company and advertisers,” says president and founder Frank Sinton. Beachfront tries to get “as close as possible” to audience and content on behalf of its publisher clients, [...]

When The Walt Disney Company launches the Disney+ direct-to-consumer streaming service in late 2019, it won’t be advertising-supported. But Disney Advertising Sales is already talking to brands that want to “experience the Disney customer far and away beyond just the traditional advertising,” says sales chief Rita Ferro. Disney+ will be the third piece of a direct-to-consumer triad when combined with ESPN+, [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—As traditional television networks weigh the benefits of completely upending their business models, they also find themselves as middlemen of sorts between advertisers and agencies. This is the view of Ethan Heftman, VP, Precision/Performance, A+E Networks, who notes “a bit of a bifurcation, a division between what brands want and what the agencies need to deliver.” In this [...]

SAN JUAN -- By dint of being digital and connected, new over-the-top TV services are supremely measurable. So why is that a problem? In this video interview with Beet.TV, Omnicom Media Group chief research officer Jonathan Steuer opens up on the dilemmas presented by the emergence of connected TV platforms. Interviewing Steuer for Beet.TV is veteran TV research executive Howard Shimmel. "Traditional television measurement, [...]

Amid the ongoing march of VOD, TV isn't without a fight. In fact, some of the smarter broadcasters are now using advanced software technology to wring far greater efficacy from their ad inventory than ever before. Case in point - NBCUniversal, which just switched on a new tool that uses machine learning to better indicate to ad buyers the best moments [...]

The rise of Netflix has given ad-funded media and ad buyers alike the collywobbles. Analysis from nScreenMedia suggests U.S. Netflix viewers, by substituting free viewing for subscription video-on-demand, are missing 2 billion ad views every day, totaling missing ad sales estimated at between $3 billion and $6 billion annually. So what's an ad buyer to do? The woman in charge of helping [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Consultant Matt Prohaska senses less of a stigma surrounding programmatic television and more “cross pollination” of agency teams. But he sees things like frequency capping and reducing transactional friction costs as very much a work in progress. “Fortunately, thank god the stigma of programmatic TV and those two words being bridged together is not a bugaboo anymore or [...]

Walking the floors of last year’s CES extravaganza, EY’s Janet Balis saw many separate consumer-facing ecosystems with smart technology in common. “And you see a lot of friction between the electronics in your kitchen suddenly communicating with your front door or communicating with the screens and devices and mobile experiences that we each have,” says the Global Advisory Leader for [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—With more long-tail video migrating to television distribution, vetting that content is a demanding process, according to Neil Smith of FreeWheel Markets. A bit easier but also required is being able to map the personnel structure of major agency holding companies to figure out whom the company needs to work with. While FreeWheel’s focus has always been on [...]

Even as more marketers come to understand the value proposition of advanced advertising targeting, more sell-side silos are being erected. This is why a big focus under new GroupM North America CEO Tim Castree is to encourage the disaggregation of data, inventory and technology. While a lot of progress has been made in the last several years, “there’s still too many [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—With collaboration “really the key word,” 4C Insights continues to add to its ensemble of inventory aggregation partners for unified, cross-platform targeting and measurement given advertisers’ desire for more scale. “The theme for us continues to be to provide audience-driven solutions for marketers, where they can buy on an audience-basis inventory across linear TV, social video, over the [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—So-called direct-to-consumer brands have disrupted many product and service categories, from creation to distribution. But when they need more scale they’re turning to television, a trend that prompted NBCUniversal to partner with the agency Giant Spoon. Last month, the two companies launched Direct to Scale, whose core offerings are media strategy and making premium video advertising on linear [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—There’s lots of predictions about where television and premium video are headed. Then again, “There’s a lot of things that are actually already happening, probably more in some ways than a wider industry lens might understand,” says VideoAmp’s Jay Prasad. This is why Prasad reflects on this year’s Retreat in this interview as “a small and purposely put [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- For some devices, ad targeting is all about profiling and reaching individual users with laser precision. The emerging online TV landscape is a little different. After all, television - at least, the one that persists in the corner or on the wall of a living room is a shared device. "Connected TV is it's all about the [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—An early entrant in digital marketing, independent buy-side platform Sizmek has been eyeing its near-term future from a “video extension perspective” as its reach moves beyond web video to television. It was a logical move considering the big shift in video viewing to big screens, according to Managing Director of Product Hardeep Bindra. “The last few years have [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Building audience targeting segments for attributes like advocacy and loyalty is best done with sub-segments at the various steps of the purchase funnel, according to NCC’s Danielle Seth. In this interview with Beet.TV, the VP of Client Partnerships explains how NCC leverages its MVPD unique subscriber identifiers matched to set-top box data and then marketers first- and third-party [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- When people think about "brand safety", the extent to which it is possible to assess ad inventory for alignment with an ad buyer, they often tend to put the onus on the buyer itself. But don't publishers also have a duty to better indicate the kinds of ad spots advertisers can buy? Joanna Foyle thinks so. And, [...]