With a nod to the technology legacy of Alexander Graham Bell, AT&T Advertising & Analytics has rebranded itself as Xandr and announced a deal to aggregate and sell the national addressable TV advertising inventory of Altice USA and Frontier Communications. The news comes as AT&T convenes The Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara to explain how its communications, data and content assets [...]

TORONTO -- As Cadent’s technology powers the targeted-television advertising platform that pools the inventory of Sky and Virgin Media in the UK and Ireland, the company is busy helping to scale dynamic ad insertion in Canada. Among its tasks for Sky and Virgin are creating a “compliant, walled garden” to abide by GDPR privacy strictures, says Cadent’s VP of Technology [...]

COLOGNE – As publishers have worked to clean up the digital media ecosystem, advances like header bidding have lifted their revenue. But it’s all still a work in progress, according to PubMatic Co-Founder & CEO Rajeev Goel. “One of the biggest issues right now is trust and transparency across the ecosystem,” says Goel. “We’ve all seen over the last couple of [...]

TORONTO—Although Canada is behind the United States in the adoption of addressable linear television advertising—owing largely to inadequate set-top boxes—that’s going to change quickly. “Disruption is here” in the form of Netflix and other OTT providers, says Rich Astley, Global Chief Product Officer of GroupM’s Finecast agency. Canada is a “fascinating market and for many reasons,” Astley says in this Beet.TV [...]

COLOGNE – Given the headline-grabbing allure of advanced television, things like organic and paid search can get overlooked. But search is still one of the best sources of human intent and can provide long-term customer value beyond initial purchases. So says Craig Ellis, Global COO of the IPG agency Reprise Digital, in this interview with Beet.TV at the annual DMEXCO conference [...]

The same 90 million shopper loyalty cards that have long fueled Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ digital advertising targeting and measurement efforts are helping to open doors to household addressable. “It’s just the mechanics of doing it differ as to where it goes,” says Tom Eaton, the company’s SVP of TV & Programmatic Solutions. “We’ve had to establish relationships basically all or the [...]

COLOGNE – Pixability has built its business providing video advertising software across the walled gardens of the biggest social media platforms. Now it’s eying the over-the-top and connected-TV space as well, armed with a new offering that automates data analysis around video creative. “A lot of folks refer to us as the trade desk for walled gardens,” says Pixability CEO David [...]

COLOGNE – Strategic advisory firm MediaLink considers itself as occupying “the intersection of marketing, media, advertising, entertainment and technology.” To say it’s a busy place to be is an understatement, according to Chairman & CEO Michael Kassan. “We are in an absolute state of transformation. I’ll be kind, I used to say chaos. It’s controlled chaos,” Kassan says in this interview [...]

COLOGNE -- While everyone has spent the last year asking "Is Facebook a media company?", there is one of the big-four tech firms about which you could probably quickly answer that question. Amazon certainly isn't just a book store anymore. These days, it has a large offering of ad products to help buyers advertise both on and off its platforms. But the [...]

COLOGNE -- How does LiveRamp - a company which combines consumers' online and offline personal data with browsing behavior - view the current landscape? In this video interview with Beet.TV, LiveRamp GM Jeff Smith notes a change in brands' own sentiment. "I used to walk in and try to convince marketers and agencies of the import ... not just the importance of [...]

When Ashley J. Swartz hears the word relevance, the term renaissance comes to mind. Having doubled down on television "not only surviving but thriving," she sees AT&T’s The Relevance Conference as the confluence of TV’s potential future in one place. “I think it’s incredibly exciting to see that some of the leaders in the marketplace and the biggest players are bringing [...]

COLOGNE – In a growing direct-to-consumer brand environment, can positive, trusted and emotional content help marketers connect to consumers? CNN has wagered more than $40 million on Great Big Story and is convinced its content philosophy for younger viewers provides that connectivity. Launched in 2015, Great Big Story is an independent digital studio owned by CNN and whose roots began in [...]

COLOGNE -- The acquisition of Videology by Amobee will lead to new opportunities in the use of data-driven advertising, says one of the executives who transferred in the deal. Videology filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, and was bought by Amobee in July for approximately $100 million. So what is the next chapter for this video powerhouse? Jon Block, who was VP [...]

COLOGNE -- The new capabilities of the emerging world of addressable TV and digital video delivery are not just an opportunity for the big guns. Smaller programmers, too, are rising up and getting a piece of the action. But are they getting a piece of the revenue pie? That's where FreeWheel international GM Thomas Bremond hopes his company can help. The Comcast-owned [...]

COLOGNE -- SpotX has come a long way since its launch more than a decade ago. Just ask Mike Shehan. He co-founded the company as a self-serve off-shoot of another company he was at. Acquired by European broadcast group RTL in full last year, now Shehan is speaking from a vantage point at which he has seen tremendous growth. But the SpotX [...]

COLOGNE – Brand marketers’ desire to bring functions in-house isn’t necessarily new for advertising or media agencies, but one of the more challenging ramifications of clients’ quest for brand safety is in-housing activities the agencies used to handle. “Transparency still is a huge, huge issue,” OMD Global CEO Florian Adamski says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent DMEXCO conference. “Whereas I believe [...]

As addressable television advertising closes in on some 80 million homes by year’s end, Sorenson Media is emerging as “kind of a new player in this area” with a clear differentiation, says MODI Media’s Marc Cestaro. “They have not only national avails, they have local avails that go across cable and broadcast, which is new. “ In this interview with Beet.TV, [...]

All of the 250 invitation-only attendees of next week’s AT&T event titled The Relevance Conferences are aware that the “new” AT&T will be a big operation with lots of scale. So what exactly should the “official reveal of their offering” communicate to the industry? “What everyone’s anxious to understand is a bit more of the how. With a massive footprint, with [...]

COLOGNE -- It is the world’s largest independent advertising exchange, but a relatie newcomer to the video world. Now OpenX is seeing big growth in moving images. "We started really about a year and a half ago," says OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan in this video interview with Beet.TV. "We went out to probably 10% of revenue. [Now] it's growing north of 500% [...]

Don't call it a comeback but, after coming through a period in which a slowdown was capped by new regulation, MarTech consolidation may be back in-play. So says Terry Kawaja, the M&A advisor who has had a hand in many of the biggest media and advertising tech deals of the last decade. Despite fears that GDPR and an American equivalent could nix [...]