With traditional TV acting more like digital and digital mimicking some of the TV model, sorting it all out for brand marketers isn’t easy. That’s why it pays to be “on the ground” in New York City during the Digital Content NewFronts, according to Janine Cross of Philadelphia-based Harmelin Media. In this interview with Beet.TV, the independently owned agency’s VP of [...]

The first live-streaming talk show with a live audience, Mario Armstrong’s Never Settle was created to help people maximize their human potential. It’s co-produced by Roker Media with Entrepreneur Network as distribution partner. “Most people know they have something inside of them they don’t have a support system or tips and advice in a structured format to help them achieve [...]

As it has for many decades, financial giant Bank of America will have a presence at this year’s UpFront. But having recently changed to a calendar year for planning purposes, BOA will be focused mainly on selecting the most appropriate publishing partners. BOA’s agency, Publicis GroupeConnect, decided that the UpFront planning model “just wasn’t suiting our needs our needs anymore as [...]

LAS VEGAS - The future is more complicated than it used to be. Now, a broadcaster's go-to-market TV strategy can't be just one distribution channel; it has to be many. That was the verdict of several executives on a panel of industry folk assembled to discuss TV companies' response to the burgeoning new multi-screen future. The key question - how to approach ad sales [...]

With all the talk about more precise audience targeting for linear TV, some basic things can get overlooked. For veteran buy-siders like Jason Kanefsky, who’s witnessing his 30th Upfront, those things include basic supply and demand dynamics. So while “we’re taking a lot of first steps in lots of different directions,” sometimes there’s progress in the TV space and sometimes not, [...]

Technology has done amazing things to create a variety of ways people can consume premium television content, helping to spark a “golden age” for content creators. But is the same technology and the data it enables encouraging the hyper targeting of audiences just because the capability exists? David Sable is quick to point out that algorithms for TV buying are nothing [...]

When Judy McGrath and Nick Shore talk about the impetus behind Astronauts Wanted, they sound like long-distance runners in a never-ending race. There’s no finish line per se, just another generation of young people whose entertainment desires they need to decipher and outpace. It’s a fast-paced mode that McGrath and Shore willingly chose when they departed MTV Networks back in 2013. [...]

Unruly has been studying what makes people engage with digital content for more than a decade. So the company knows that it’s easier to emotionally connect with parents and that moms shouldn’t get all the attention because dads like to buy lots of stuff. And while there’s lots of attention paid by industry groups to user experiences with ad formats, “There [...]

For three-year-old, female-oriented publisher Little Things, specializing in disseminating nothing but good news has become a path to five upcoming TV distribution partnerships reaching 50 million households. According to President & Chief Operating Officer Gretchen Tibbits, comScore data show that at 55.8 million women, Little Things claims the mantles of largest standalone lifestyle site and the largest URL reaching women. “We’re very [...]

Organized sporting events aren’t just about highlights and box scores anymore. As the worlds of sports, entertainment and culture collide, Bleacher Report wants to be known as home base for all the attendant conversation and commentary. “I think what we see now is people are really engaged in sports moments and they don’t traditionally see those moments now during a three- [...]

When Discovery invested $100mn in a new holding company for lifestyle publisher Thrillist last year, reports said it made CEO Ben Lerer a "new media mogul". So what is Lerer doing with the money? Having formed Group Nine Media  to operate Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and Seeker, he now runs a mini media company that is helping one of the big [...]

MTV certainly contributed a lot to 1980’s entertainment. For DEFY Media, one of the most valuable learnings was the “fast fail model.” So while DEFY’s programming resembles traditional programming in areas like writers and talent, where it “varies a bit” is in MTV’s concept that no idea is bad, CEO Matt Diamond says in this interview with Beet.TV during the Digital [...]

To make things easy for brands during the extravaganza that is the annual Digital Content NewFronts, DEFY Media has condensed its advertiser offerings to three options: buy, badge, build. “We want to make it easy that when they see our shows, they know how to work with us,” says DEFY Media CMO Andy Tu. Buy consists of brands placing media at the [...]

A lot of the digital video platforms young people flock to today didn’t exist when POPSUGAR got started in 2006. But the company figured it could build audiences with personalities that young women could come to trust. Now the company produces about nine videos each day “so we’re not a publisher that waits around for the NewFronts to bring out new [...]

Having veered into negative territory over the past few years, the pendulum of industry discourse about digital video is swinging back to positive. And while there’s work to be done to streamline the planning and execution of premium video advertising, more marketers now have a deeper understanding of the benefits of being in its brand-safe environments. These are some of the [...]

When MTV Networks alumni Judy McGrath and Nick Shore formed Astronauts Wanted in 2013, they certainly understood younger audiences. What has become a joint venture between McGrath and Sony Music Entertainment has a broadly defined audience of 16 to 30 but its “sweet spot” tops out at 24. Astronauts Wanted’s three main formats are premium episodic series, movies and “experimental storytelling” [...]

Most people wouldn’t search for and watch a video about treating Crohn’s Disease unless they thought they or a loved one might have the illness. This concept is what helps give HealthiNation a "highly qualified and targetable audience." Combine that with the highly vetted nature of the publisher’s content—accredited by the non-profit group URAC—and the ability to tie ad exposure to [...]

When Newsy was created about 10 years ago, there wasn’t anywhere near the amount of content that exists today and calls itself “news.” Despite the crowded field, Newsy is launching a live, two-hour nightly news show this summer. With its close ties to the School of Journalism of the University of Missouri—close as in located across the street—Newsy wants to look [...]

The Digital Content NewFronts may have been conceived as a showcase for publishers to wave under the noses of ad buyers for the year ahead. So what is a tech platform doing at the event? Amongst a series of appearances last week, Rocket Fuel, a predictive marketing platform, partnered with both Integral Ad Science and IAB to deliver data-driven presentations the truth behind publisher's claims [...]

The Digital Content NewFronts, a season when digital publishers line up to showcase their upcoming content roster to ad buyers, is now in to its ninth year. In that time, the series of pitches has grown to sit alongside TV's upfronts as a way to secure advanced ad sales. And Jason Hill has seen its maturation. In this interview with Beet.TV, the global head of media for financial [...]