HOLLYWOOD, Fl -- It just wangled a big fine out of TV maker Vizio for collecting millions of viewers' viewing histories without consent. Now the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to ensure all consumers know plenty more about how their data is being used. The FTC just published a staff report on how publishers track and consumer data across devices. The conclusion [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – The year 2017 will see WPP’s Xaxis increasingly focus on performance outcomes for its clients’ video ad campaigns. “Every campaign that we will run will have a KPI that is considered very important to the advertiser that we will achieve,” says David J. Moore, who is President of WPP Digital and Chairman of Xaxis. Moore is one of [...]

It is now nine months since a Digital Content Next analysis first showed that Google and Facebook were gobbling an extraordinary 90% of all new digital ad dollars. The figure wasn't out on its own. It was one approximated by a Morgan Stanley analysis. Together, they have scared the publishing industry. AppNexus, an alternative advertising network operator, says publishers are desperate for a change. "Publishers haven’t [...]

HOLLYWOOD -- Advertisers are grappling to develop single profiles that can read and understand their audiences across multiple devices and in a diverse range of contexts. But the same technology has application outside of just marketing. That is according to an executive from one vendor helping brands to develop just such a "universal ID". "(Brands) have a great story about who bought what," says Neustar SVP and chief [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Fl -- If you missed the announcement in November, you may not know that another ad agency holding group has enacted another reorganization aimed at making business more client-centric and function-driven. GroupM launched [m]Platform, a “suite” that comprises data analytics, audience insights, data scientists, technologists from across other GroupM divisions, and in to it wrapped Xaxis, its programmatic and data-driven ad unit. What's the [...]

HOLLYWOOD -- Publishers have eagerly embraced a technology which allows them to call on multiple ad buyer demand sources simultaneously to achieve higher bids - now they must carefully scrutinize the next iteration of the tech. That is according to a man who is surely the only executive out there with the title "VP of global automated monetization". "Almost every publisher in the room said they [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – Streaming television pioneer Roku foresees ad loads decreasing and, as a result, the value of ads has to increase. “From an ad strategy perspective, we feel strongly that an empowered consumer needs a more relevant and better ad experience than they’ve had historically in TV,” says VP of Advertising & Audience Development Scott Rosenberg. This is why the [...]

HOLLYWOOD -- After being "beaten up" by ruinous, fraudulent and overly straitjacketing ad-tech practices, a new consensus has emerged between ad agencies and other parts of the value chain, beginning a new era of creativity. That's according to the woman who runs the body representing advertising agencies in the US. "We’re in a really good place right now," says Nancy Hill, president of [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – Having recently released its first software development kit for monitoring in-app ads, the IAB Tech Lab is busily prepping the latest overhaul of open real-time bidding protocols. “I’m really excited about it,” says the IAB’s Alanna Gombert. The Lab’s first SDK is a takeover of an initiative originally conceived and developed by Integral Ad Science. Called the Mobile [...]

HOLLYWOOD -- In the new programmatic buzzword of "header bidding", publishers no longer have to run auctions for ad buys sequentially; they can audition multiple demand sources simultaneously, to get the highest price. The practice has been around a few years, but spent 2016 bedding in. In 2017, however, header bidding is changing. No longer confined as a "client-side" technology (one which runs [...]

Storyful may be best known as a service mixing technology and editors to help news organization verify genuine online video from the fake stuff. But now the outfit, acquired by News Corp in 2013, is also turning its expertise toward brand content. Storyful these days doesn't just help news orgs - it also helps advertisers and their agencies verify and license user-uploaded content for [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – Has the pendulum begun to swing from advertising and media’s preoccupation with digital viewability to audience quality? It’s a trend that comScore executive Aaron Fetters is seeing on the buy side—along with a keen desire to clean up “a mess” of an ecosystem. “We finally seem to be going a little bit beyond just the discussion of viewability [...]

News Corp's social media news agency Storyful may have started out life validating user-uploaded news content for news publishers. But that doesn't mean advertisers, too, cannot benefit from the Dublin-born company's efforts. Two years ago, Storyful opened up the same offering - verifying, validating and licensing user content - for re-use by brands and their agencies. So, how does it work, and why? "We [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida -- If you thought the Super Bowl was the place advertisers can make the biggest impact with sports viewers, it may be time to step in to the 21st Century. Right now, hundreds of thousands of consumers around the world are watching each other play video games. And those broadcasts are proving to be lucrative. So much so that Turner Sports [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida -- Magazine and digital publisher Time Inc is shooting toward a future where it can sell across the spectrum - from high-touch, human sales, to automated online transactions. Now the outfit is bolstering that last part, by making an acquisition which will put more of the automation power in the hands of its ad buyers. Last year, Time Inc bought itself [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – Anyone over the age of 60 probably hasn't heard of Cheddar TV. Which is entirely the point, according to its Founder & CEO, former BuzzFeed executive Jon Steinberg, whose plans include activation within two more popular TV bundles in the coming months. “I saw nobody recreating the MSNBC, CNN, CNBC for people under the age of 60,” Steinberg recalls [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – While programmatic media buying continues to grow rapidly, publishers need to remain flexible with their infrastructure. It’s all about helping advertisers reach the audiences they want, says the SVP and Global Head of Programmatic for News Corp., Chris Guenther. “It’s just a means of servicing our clients,” Guenther says of programmatic in an interview with Beet.TV during a [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – Less than a month after announcing it would publish a daily collection of news stories in Facebook Instant Articles, The Washington Post says the move has been "a win financially," a positive sign in an era of strained relations between traditional publishers and digital giants. Last summer, the Post was among the first publishers to offer branded content on [...]

HOLLYWOOD, Florida - On the heels of his company’s expanded partnership with AppNexus, Index Exchange President & CEO Andrew Casale reflects on the benefits of focusing exclusively on supply side clients, becoming “an infrastructure” company and fostering adtech partnerships. Until three years ago, Index Exchange was known as Casale Media, an early proponent of programmatic founded in 2001. Back then, “There [...]

HOLLYWOOD, FL -- The ad-tech sector must do more to clamp down on a wave of "fake news" and ad fraud that is threatening both publishers and advertisers. That is according to the new chair of the US branch of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Jim Norton was elected to the post this week in the organization that represents the online advertising industry. "This authenticated supply [...]