COLOGNE – Now that AppNexus is part of the AT&T advertising, content and communications universe, AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley says that making advertising matter is the overarching mantra. Central to that theme is relevance to consumers, and the world will learn exactly what that means when AT&T convenes its Relevance conference in California later this month. One of the big reveals [...]

COLOGNE – There are cultural and regulatory differences, but the television industry in Europe and the United States realizes it needs more unity to meet advertisers’ expectations. And the buy-side is ready to go, even though more tools are needed to fully realize advanced TV, according to FreeWheel’s Dave Clark. From his position as GM, EVP, Advanced Advertising, FreeWheel, Comcast Clark [...]

COLOGNE -- It has survived the Corn Laws and economic criticism of its own. Now The Economist says it is emerging from two of its latest challenges in fitter shape. In this video interview with Beet.TV, the newspaper's global digital revenue SVP Michael Mullaney says his title has found fear about the GDPR law and advertiser resistance toward news itself have both subsided. "To [...]

COLOGNE – As it extends beyond its roots of helping retailers with consumer ad retargeting, Criteo is building a new tech stack around platforms to help online retailers monetize their inventory. “They know we are sitting on a pile of data and data is gold, and they want to know how to use it,” says Criteo’s Gregory Gazagne. “We believe we [...]

COLOGNE – With its global programming footprint projected to reach more than 80 territories by year’s end, VICE Media today announced VICE Video Everywhere to make buying its advertising easier across mobile, digital and linear platforms. “The market is crying for more video. There is a huge shortage on that market,” says Dominique Delport, who is President, International & Global Chief [...]

COLOGNE -- The era when news publishers were happy to just adopt big ad-tech firms' stacks is over. Now they want to control their tech and, with it, their own destiny. So says the man who runs programmatic ad-tech at one of the world's biggest news publishers. "The key, the underlying thing across all this is really making sure that we control [...]

COLOGNE – The world's largest independent buy-side advertising platform, Sizmek, says it will roll out an advanced-television solution that fully integrates linear, addressable and connected-TV advertising inventory. It will be powered by artificial-intelligence insights derived from digital advertising to TV for optimal targeting, reach and frequency across full campaigns. In this interview today at the annual DMEXCO conference, Sizmek CEO Mark [...]

When you are operating across multiple devices and channels to reach consumers that have fragmented in the last few years, you soon run up against a big problem. Those devices each throw off different data streams. Add that to the unique data sets also created when you buy ads through multiple places. It's enough to make a marketer's head spin. Cue the [...]

With television advertising targeting slowly catching up to that of digital media, “We think the revolution is just starting,” says Sandro Catanzaro, dataxu’s Chief Innovation Officer & Co-Founder. What started with “very humble web ads” about a decade ago has progressed to the point where “where we can show ads on TV that are fully addressed, and one by one, and [...]

SAN FRANCISCO – The complexity of transacting local radio and television has long been a challenge. Now that it’s further complicated by data and digital technology advances, a one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t cut it, according to Tim Swift, VP of Platform Services at WideOrbit. So although WideOrbit provides the “system of record” for much of local broadcast media, it too needs [...]

An integration between dataxu and Sorensen Media is designed to reduce the time needed to activate and measure addressable television campaigns so that addressable starts to mimic the speed at which over-the-top TV has taken root. “This is going to be an explosion, a dramatic change in the market,” says Sandro Catanzaro, dataxu’s Chief Innovation Officer & Co-Founder. It can typically [...]

It is the number-nine news organization in the United States, with 52 million monthly uniques and 11 million social followers. But, like any local news company, the challenge for Advance Local is piecing together its network of local strengths in to something that has both scale and on-the-ground relevance. To date, Advance Local has made a good fist of selling digital ads [...]

If you were thinking it has been some time since the advertising world saw another technology acronym introduced, get ready to welcome the "CDP". After DSPs, DMPs and SSPs, chat about "Customer Data Platforms" has been getting louder in 2018. But what is a CDP and what is their future? In this video interview with Beet.TV, mParticle CEO Michael Katz says it's all [...]

In the most significant manifestation of its desire to offer one-stop advertising, Walt Disney Co. is consolidating ESPN and Disney/ABC properties under Rita Ferro while announcing that longtime ESPN sales chief Ed Erhardt will retire in early 2019. In addition to ESPN and Disney/ABC, Ferro’s domain as President of Disney Advertising Sales will include Disney’s mobile, social and digital portfolio and [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- It owns dozens of local TV stations in 44 US markets, and several TV production companies besides - so how is Raycom Media adapting to the rapidly-changing world of TV ad sales? Beside a $3.6 billion merger with Gray earlier this summer, the company has tapped WideOrbit, a San Francisco-based company with a software platform that handles  scheduling, billing, content management [...]

SAN FRANCISCO – When WideOrbit was founded 18 years ago, the television universe was a whole lot simpler yet it was still too complicated at the local level. “There needed to be a solid foundation and system of record across the industry” that WideOrbit set out to create, says the company’s EVP of Engineering, Will Offeman. Now with the convergence of [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- It may not quite be mom-and-pop, but it sure is father-and-son. Lilly Broadcasting is the US local broadcasting company previously run by George Lilly and son Brian, now by Brian and brother Kevin. With operations in Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Hawaii and Michigan, Lilly is keeping things small. But finance chief Wade O'Hagan thinks small is beautiful - and [...]

Longtime WPP executive Mark Read, who has been serving as interim co-COO in the aftermath of the departure of the April Martin Sorrell, has been selected as the new CEO of WPP. In June at Cannes Lions, we sat down with Read to talk about the agency business, the needs of brands and the value of data  We have republished that [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- What happens when you combine two media analytics problems with aspirations on driving growth for their clients? A perfect "marriage", says one of the parties involved. Revenue Analytics is the Atlanta company aiming to drive revenue. WideOrbit is a San Francisco-based company with a software platform that handles  scheduling, billing, content management and invoicing for TV ads around the US. In April, [...]

SAN FRANCISCO – As national television networks are coming together to standardize audience targeting, local broadcasters know they need to make the buying and selling of their inventory easier to execute. For Hearst Television and several others, one vehicle is the TIP Initiative hosted by the trade group TVB. “Local TV still has the majority of its revenue based upon the [...]