Over the last few years, the digital advertising world has become incredibly complex, and - perhaps us coincidentally - fairly rife with fraudulent buys, too. So leave it to a simple little text file to clean up the whole sorry mess. That's what the IAB Tech Lab is aiming to do with its Ads.txt initiative - and many ad-tech execs think it [...]

With three out of four Americans watching streaming video content, connected and over-the-top viewing has advanced beyond the test stage. Now big advertising dollars are starting to follow their migration from linear TV. “This is late mainstream for consumers,” says Brian Stempeck, Chief Client Officer at The Trade Desk, the demand-side platform. Similar to when people in ever-increasing numbers began to use [...]

It is now two years since Sling TV was launched by DISH - enough time for the pair's journey down the advanced TV ad sales road to go pretty far. In this video interview with Beet.TV, DISH's advanced TV ad sales director Adam Lowy explains how DISH began the journey, and where it stands today. Lowy describes four phases in the evolution of [...]

In a digital advertising world increasingly dominated by Google and Facebook, there is still a clutch of large-scaled ad-tech platforms that give the duopoly a good run for its money. But is the two giants' lead unassailable if those platforms continue working alone? That is a question three of them set out to answer this May, when AppNexus, Index Exchange and LiveRamp [...]

It is barely a year since a hard-hitting ANA report blew the lid off practices in which US advertising agencies were accused of keeping up to 20% of clients’ media budgets for themselves after engaging in “pervasive” kick-backs and rebates. Some agencies have sought to demonstrate they are cleaning up not only their own practices but also are pushing to help clients navigate [...]

For a business that moves so quickly these days, some things sure do go slowly. Case in point - AppNexus' rebooted demand-side platform (DSP). A whopping four years in the making, the ad-tech company finally unveiled the "AppNexus Programmable Platform" (APP) this week. But, in this video interview with Beet.TV, CEO Brian O'Kelley says he thinks APP will be worth the wait. APP [...]

MIAMI – Sometimes, small miracles happen in the midst of huge catastrophes. The Puerto Rican island of Vieques was largely cut off from the world when Hurricane Maria made land on Sept. 20, but its Boys & Girls Club facility remained intact and quickly became a hub of relief activity. “Luckily, our club in Vieques was directly affected but was not [...]

Under the partnership announced this week between AppNexus and Tru Optik, publishers will be able to pre-segment their connected-TV inventory and have private marketplace deal ID’s to control access to the inventory. “From a technological and logistical standpoint, it’s really a huge step forward for the entire industry,” says Andre Swanston, CEO and Co-Founder of data and technology provider Tru [...]

If you believe certain commentators, television is "dead", it's "dying" or the cable cord is being cut at a precipitous pace. Truth is, says Kevin O'Reilly, whilst TV is changing, the medium will remain the dominant influence channel for a good few years. That's why O'Reilly is chief technology officer at TVSquared, a company helping brands learn how TV advertising is driving [...]

MIAMI – Even on the best of days, things can go awry on Vieques, the island off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast. Water and power supplies can be cut, groceries may or may not be available, but people just help each other get by. So when a natural disaster the likes of Hurricane Maria happens, everyone pulls together the way they’re [...]

MIAMI – What took the federal government more than five days—to begin assembling aid for hurricane-ravaged Vieques—started the night of the storm among concerned citizens. That’s when Brittany Roush and Kelly Thompson, Editor and Publisher of Vieques Insider Magazine, started the group ViequesLove. It was done “with the intent of raising thirty thousand or forty thousand dollars,” says Roush, who is [...]

MIAMI – The last two months have been “a testament to what the American Red Cross can do,” with Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico just the latest in a series of crises, says the organization’s Regional Communications & Marketing Director, Grace Meinhofer. “Three hurricanes, the California fires, we helped with the shooting in Las Vegas and we also assisted the Mexican [...]

In the new age of online advertising, more and more formats offer larger and longer creative deliveries to audiences. But that doesn't mean advertisers should ram messages down users' throats. In this video interview with Beet.TV, one ad exec offering so-called "high-impact" formats says they need to be more responsible than that. "High-impact might be a big factor but you need to [...]

MIAMI – It’s easy to forget that before Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the island was in dire economic straights. One of the organizations that realizes this the most is the 50-year-old Boys & Girls Club Puerto Rico. Before Maria, 90% of the group’s participants—mainly youths ages six to 18—were below the poverty level on the island, according to President Olga [...]

Editor's note: This interview with Joe Rockhill runs to 5:30. In the rest of the video, Team Rubicon's Michael Lloyd provides an overview from Isabella, Puerto Rico. MIAMI – There are only so many first responders in a particular city or an entire country to deal with natural disasters like Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. This is where groups like Team [...]

If you think the closer you are to a television screen the better the picture is, the same principle applies to the automatic content recognition (ACR) approach taken by Inscape. Formerly known as Cognitive Media Networks before its acquisition by consumer electronics provider Vizio, Inscape is closer to the TV picture than a set-top box. “We detect at the glass” attributes [...]

MIAMI - It is best known for popularizing the "outstream" ads that allow online publishers to break out of the need to have video content against which to place video ads. But now Teads wants to break out of another box - its own. Whilst the ad-tech vendor famously allowed publishers to place video ads between text paragraphs, it now also wants [...]

MIAMI – Once a natural disaster occurs, it’s back to basics. For agencies and marketers it can mean using billboards to reach people who don’t have power or Internet connectivity. For brands like Procter & Gamble, it can be dispatching mobile units to wash, dry and fold clothes for the recovering community. In the wake of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, [...]

MIAMI – The efforts of clients like Walmart, Procter & Gamble and AT&T in responding to humanitarian crises in Mexico and Puerto Rico demonstrate “authenticity and doing the right thing,” says the CEO of Omnicom Media Group’s LATAM operations. “Brands belong to society and are part of society,” Julian Porras says following the launch of STAND WITH PUERTO RICO, an new [...]

As Tim Hanlon surveys the advanced television landscape, he sees “a quickening in the pace” of all things actionable. “Literally just six to 12 months ago, you couldn’t have an intelligent conversation about how television and data truly work together,” says the Founder & CEO of The Vertere Group. Things like attribution from set-top box data to blockchain technology for programmatic [...]