Arun Kumar deliberately avoids the term “programmatic” when talking about advanced television’s audience targeting potential. “All we’re trying to do is take some of the principals behind programmatic. We don’t want to buy space for the sake of buying space,” says the Global President of Cadreon, Interpublic Group’s ad tech unit. Semantics aside, Kumar is focused on answering a particular question [...]

ORLANDO, Florida - As the Association of National Advertisers continues to shine a spotlight on the issue of non-transparency in marketer/media agency relations, its Chairman says there’s a bigger issue at play. If he could, Tony Pace would “hit the reset button” on the entire digital media supply chain. In an interview with Beet.TV at the ANA’s annual Masters of Marketing [...]

ORLANDO, Florida - Roughly half a billion video views later, it’s easy to see why Procter & Gamble’s Like A Girl narrative for Always feminine products has been a big hit. It’s hard to disagree that the creative debunking—mainly via video impressions both purchased and earned—of how girls run or throw a ball “Was good for the business and good [...]

Web users don't like too many ads, and TV viewers may feel the same way, too. That's why, last October, Turner made a big announcement that it would reduce the ad load in some of its TV broadcasts. One year on, how is the initiative faring? Donna Speciale, Turner Ad Sales' president, tells Beet.TV the early results are exploratory but promising, and lead her toward [...]

By many accounts, there are now around 45mn US households which can receive so-called addressable TV ads, those targeted at the individual household level. But that's fewer than half the total number of TV households, and getting here has been a slow slog. Yet the inertia is not stopping advertisers from embracing opportunities around TV targeting nevertheless. "TV … has been, and still is, able [...]

How does “advanced” television in all of its forms—OTT, VOD, online—come to resemble good old-fashioned network TV? When its ad inventory and viewers are concentrated among a few big players. To be sure, the advantages of advanced TV include the ability to use data for better audience targeting and results measurement, Babs Rangaiah, Partner for Global Marketing Solutions at marketing services [...]

By most accounts, this presidential election campaign has been a momentously bad moment for democracy. But news networks are benefitting as viewers plug in to watch the horror show unfold, and advertisers follow them in. CNN is finding a bump from both planned and unexpected executions, according to its owner Turner's ad sales president Donna Speciale. "News has become the new prime-time entertainment," she tells Beet.TV [...]

ORLANDO, Florida  - For the first time, the digital advertising industry—via the Trustworthy Accountability Group—has a formal partnership with federal law enforcement agencies to combat criminal activity, TAG President and CEO Mike Zaneis says in an interview with Beet.TV. Since its founding, TAG members have been sharing intelligence about bad actors in the digital advertising space so that the group [...]

Whereas an advertising agency used to be the “right hand” to chief marketing officers, now it’s one of many fingers typically owned by a holding company. “The way the holding companies work is they buy a bunch of agencies, but they don’t really work together,” says Babs Rangaiah, Partner for Global Marketing Solutions at IBM iX. Rangaiah ran herd over a [...]

COLOGNE -- Over the last year, we have reported how Belgian quad-play operator Proximus is trying to balance its broadband and TV subscribers' customer experience with offering better ad targeting to clients. Now the outfit is ready to find out how well that balance can work, by lighting up a new addressable TV ad offering for Proximus TV, its TV service. "Thanks to FreeWheel, we [...]

Faced with a “fast and furious” proliferation of digital advertising formats, agencies and marketers must contemplate less ad interruptions while figuring out how to give consumers what they really want. “Call that branded content, brand-created, something other than advertising,” says Zak Treuhaft, President of Omnicom’s Hearts & Science agency. Mobile in particular is characterized by “an entire ecosystem of people creating [...]

In the race among advertisers seeking efficient television ratings points amid media inflation, it pays to own a trifecta. For Cadent, that trio is cable, advanced TV and the recent addition of broadcast inventory to its offerings. “So many advertisers are having a tough time competing in this marketplace,” Jim Tricarico, CRO of Cadent Network, says in an interview with Beet.TV, [...]

Simplicity, transparency and scale aren’t natural bedfellows in a world of multi-platform television viewing and audience fragmentation. Corralling all three to benefit advertisers and pay TV providers was the strategy behind last year’s joining of BlackArrow and Cadent under the Cross MediaWorks umbrella. Some 14 months later, BlackArrow and Cadent serve a combined 200 pay TV providers and 300 advertisers and [...]

While the term “high fidelity” is a relic of 1950’s audio recordings, higher fidelity is one of the potential benefits of cross-screen addressable advertising, says the president of Omnicom’s fledgling Hearts & Science agency. Zak Treuhaft also hears echoes of the early digital media era in the industry wide desire to target consumers wherever they happen to be. “In some ways I [...]

The combination of data and technology is bringing some of the best practices developed in digital programmatic advertising to the television-buying world. That same melding when applied to cross-platform targeting affords media planners the ability “to understand consumers wherever they are,” says Evan Hanlon of GroupM North America. What they have in common is two trends, Hanlon, who is Managing Partner [...]

COLOGNE - How does a media company stay abreast of and adopt new technologies to best effect. For many, the answer is to create a "lab", a division whose sole purpose is to let in-house geeks test out and apply transformational new tech. And IPG Mediabrands is no different. Its IPG Media Lab is devoted to finding new ways to solve marketing problems [...]

Of all the programmatic trading platforms out in the market, AcuityAds may have been one of those the limelight has so far evaded. But that may be set to change, after the company went public to finance its current round of growth. First founded in 2009 and also offering a data management platform, the outfit listed in Toronto in 2014. AcuityAds CEO Tal [...]

COLOGNE -- Once upon a time, multi-platform proliferation meant "desktop, tablet and smartphone". Now, we are entering an era when virtual worlds, connected toasters and even unmanned aerial vehicles represent new challenges and opportunities for brands. Neil Carty, innovation strategy SVP of marketing consulting agency MediaLink, calls all the new platforms "data exhausts", emitting cues that marketers can better use to target advertising. Drones: "When you look [...]

COLOGNE - So-called "programmatic" methods of targeting or trading advertising may be typically associated with online media platforms - but that doesn't mean something of the techniques can't also be applied to linear TV. Indeed, programmatic looks like playing a part in the next TV upfront season beginning next spring, when networks will tout their upcoming shows to advertisers in the hope of selling ad [...]

LONG ISLAND, NY -- They may not have dreamed it when they first formed a school magazine to cover a Glasgow suburb in the 1980s. But now The Drum's founders Gordon Young and Nick Creed are riding the wave of running one of the marketing industry's most influential trade publications. After leaving school, the pair formed an early print trade publishing company focused on sectors from [...]