CANNES – Within the current digital media ecosystem, it’s too easy to “mask over the blemishes of core data.” It’s this aspect of transparency in particular that marketers should be questioning, according to Matt O’Grady, CEO Nielsen Catalina Solutions. “Transparency is unquestionably the table stakes at this point,” O’Grady says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cannes Lions International [...]

When the marketing chief of the world's biggest advertiser gives a clear directive, the industry listens and conversations begin. At Cannes Lions, P&G's Marc Pritchard, who has spearheaded several high impact initiatives, implored the media and advertising  industries to embrace racial diversity.  He stressed diversity as both the right thing to do, and as a crucial business imperative. After he spoke to [...]

CANNES -- Among the most significant problem in achieving  diversity in the adtech/media and advertising industries is the "supply chain" of interested entrants, says Kirk McDonald, CMO of AT&T Advertising & Analytics. Career paths and opportunities need to be surfaced to young people starting in high school, he says. In this interview he also addresses essential changes in corporate culture which need [...]

CANNES – People in advertising and media disagree about many things, but a more consumer-centric approach to both video content and advertising is a big exception. This was more than evident during a panel discussion at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as part of the FreeWheel Forum on the Future of Television. MediaLink Managing Partner Matt Spiegel prefaced [...]

CANNES -- Media measuring has come a long way since the days of audiences filling in a weekly diary of their TV consumption, or strapping a funny box to their media device. Now measuring media consumption is just as likely to be about taking actual raw data from publishers and networks. But that doesn't mean the classical audience panel cannot still have [...]

CANNES -- Asia is big, but the scale of its digital transformation right now is bigger. In fact, businesses there are pushing to make their operations digital at such a clip that the process risks breaking down. That is according to one digital ad agency boss who says there is a need for marketers to think more clearly about their digital [...]

CANNES -- Whoever ultimately ends up owning UK TV and telco operator Sky, following the current acquisition scrap, won't just be getting the country's leading pay-TV company - it will also be gaining one of the world's earliest addressable TV pioneers. Sky launched AdSmart back in 2014, using its own customer data to analyze viewers on advertisers' behalf and sending household-specific linear [...]

CANNES – It’s a particularly complicated and challenging time for agencies and their marketer clients. This is why Horizon Media’s Bill Koenigsberg tries to keep things simple. Clients want transparency, speed to market, integration “and they want you dealing with business outcomes,” the President, CEO & Founder of Horizon says in this interview at the Cannes Lions International Festival of [...]

CANNES – If the powers that be at FreeWheel Advertisers could snap their fingers and make it happen, buying video across platforms would be as simple as buying a spot on traditional television has been for decades. Until then, their vehicle for achieving this goal is the company formerly known as Strata—now FreeWheel Advertisers. “It’s still very cumbersome and difficult for [...]

CANNES -- The gleaming, shimmering advertising future is one in which brands and buyers know which devices their target consumers are using and can plan to buy just the right amount of inventory across each to make a campaign tick. But, despite years of talk about "omni-channel" marketing, the truth is - for many - that future is still some way [...]

CANNES -- The addressable TV company GroupM established to tackle the challenge of cross-screen audience targeting and standardized measurement is still planning to expand beyond is initial UK launch market later in 2018. Last year, the agency launched Finecast, spanning multiple TV channels, pay-TV platforms, set-top boxes, video-on-demand services, over-the-top providers and game consoles. Finecast offers advertisers access to 180 different targeting segments, from [...]

CANNES - While diversity is a societal priority, it is essential for business growth, explains Teneshia Jackson Warner, founder & CEO of the urban market consulting shop Egami. Her firm created  The Talk for P&G,  a series of video ads of conversations on race between African-American parents and their young children. Warner was a participant in the Cannes in Color forum on [...]

CANNES – The Association of National Advertisers made its first trip to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this month with a mission: to induce global CMO’s to embrace and participate in its CMO Masters Circle pro-growth initiative. As Masters Circle was being established in the U.S., the ANA “started to recognize fundamental flaws in the way we manage ourselves,” [...]

CANNES -- Worries from ad buyers and sellers over how portions of their money get siphoned off by ad-tech platforms have prompted an "inertia" in which players have become reticent to try new tools. But a panel of industry executives convened by Beet.TV debated how blockchain technology could usher in a new era of transparency that could unblock this bottleneck. The panelists [...]

After transparency, back-handers and disintermediation by platforms, media agencies are also facing a competitive challenge from interest shown by big consulting firms. Is this the nail in the coffin for the traditional ad agency? Not necessarily, but their role may well evolve in the next few years. That is the view from one exec whose company is trying to sell tools to [...]

CANNES – Over the next couple of years, ensuring digital brand safety for marketers will become table stakes for publishers. In the meantime, GroupM is shifting the conversation with its clients to how ads perform better in truly brand-safe environments. “I think we’re moving into a stage where brand safety will become a commodity. Within a year or two years time, [...]

CANNES - Started three years ago on the true[X] yacht as a networking event for people of color at the festival, the program Cannes in Color has morphed into a major industry diversity movement called the I.D.E.A. Initiative. This year, it grabbed the spotlight at Cannes Lions with hundreds of attendees gathered at the Spotify beach event space for a program [...]

Whether it is AT&T buying Time Warner, Comcast and Disney bidding for 21st Century Fox, or the earlier roll-up of Verizon, Yahoo and AOL, one thing is clear - US media and technology consolidation is in full-swing. One more thing that's in full-swing? The arrival of consulting firms to the advertising and marketing party. For months, ad land has been attuned [...]

Put Rob Norman, Doug Ray and Lyle Schwartz on the same stage and you’re going to get some entertaining and sobering dialogue about the future of television in all of its varied permutations. So it was at the recent Beet Retreat in the City as the veteran trio talked about the promise of addressable TV and why a future of [...]

CANNES – Shortened by one day this year, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity attracted fewer agency people. But there was a 30% increase in attendance by brand marketers and a 20% rise in the number of consulting firms, according to MediaLink Vice Chairman Wenda Harris Millard. So the Festival is still a “very important watering hole,” says Millard. In [...]