CANNES -- Programmatic has come a long way, and confused a lot of people along the journey. Now it's time to simplify a technology that is the overriding priority for many a media agency. "Everybody needs to understand it and they need to understand the simplicity of it," according to Houssein Houssaini, global head of programmatic solutions for Havas. "We need to simplify it to [...]

Ever heard of brands like Sennit, Glossier, VSCO or mymuesli? Interbrand cites these and dozens of others in its first annual Breakthrough Brands report because its Global CEO says marketers can probably learn something from these relatively young companies. “What we’re looking for is who’s going to be next,” Jez Frampton said in an interview with Beet.TV before today’s release of [...]

Mark D'Arcy thinks we are living through the most fertile era for creativity in eight decades. But that doesn't necessarily mean he thinks we should simply get more creative. The chief creative officer of Facebook’s Creative Shop sees an "extraordinary opportunity" to "transform entire industries". His group is a team of brand marketers, creative directors and strategists who build ideas to help clients grow [...]

CANNES -- In June at Cannes Lions, Merkle, the independent data-driven ad-tech company, announced the launch of its Programmatic Addressable Marketplace, the latest ad targeting product to hit the market. As the company put it at the time, "PAM represents the industry’s first premium programmatic advertising solution that enables deterministic, people-based targeting and measurement across premium publisher audiences and inventory." What does that [...]

Time and time again, Swedes emerge as some of the most creative people on the planet. Andreas Dahlqvist is no different. He founded DDB in Sweden and the Nordics in 2004. Under his leadership, the Gunn Report ranked the shop as the best creative agency in the region and the best digital and interactive agency in the world. Now chief creative officer [...]

With the acquisition of ConvertMedia, an outstream video supply side platform, Taboola is moving to become a giant video platform, soon competing with the likes of SnapChat, Facebook and YouTube, says Adam Singolda, CEO of Taboola, in this interview taped in his Manhattan headquarters on Tuesday afternoon. With the acquisition of ConvertMedia, the company is adding a robust programmatic platform, Singolda [...]

CANNES -- In September, the 30-company advocacy group founded by video ad-tech company FreeWheel will be celebrating its first anniversary. The FreeWheel Council for Premium Video was formed last year to develop a strong and unified position on topics that matter to the premium video ecosystem. FreeWheel's Agency and Brand Relations VP James Rothwell says the Council is focusing on four areas in its first year: Defining [...]

LAS VEGAS – While the mantra of the moment would appear to be cross-screen measurement of consumer behavior, Matt O’Grady says the “big nirvana” is cross-media measurement. That means not only knowing what people are doing on digital and mobile devices but being able to pull in television viewing, print reading and radio viewing. Those data are joined with Catalina’s grocery [...]

CANNES - Marketing veteran Jordan Bitterman sees a “flight to safety” delivering advertiser dollars to places like Facebook and Google as marketers try to avoid ad fraud and other problems within the digisphere. He believes this, in turn, could have the longer-term effect of prompting other digital properties to make themselves brand-safe. Bitterman, whose career includes full-service ad agencies and digital companies like [...]

CANNES - At the end of this year’s television Upfront presentations, Lou Paskalis sensed a “digital divide” between media sellers. He credits ESPN, NBCUniversal and Turner for having making data an integral part their value propositions by virtue of the data pedigrees of their executives. In an interview with Beet.TV, the SVP of Global Communications, Media & Media Measurement at Bank [...]

CANNES – Cannes Lions wasn't always a stop on the annual tour for legacy media companies. But that's been changing. "Increasingly over time, this is really where the advertising industry, technology industry surrounding advertising brands and media are coming together," says Howard Homonoff, SVP at MediaLink. Part of their challenge is creating these different types of relationships with agencies, brands and technology companies, [...]

Back in October, US satellite pay-TV company DISH Network launched an advertising exchange to help advertisers buy targeted, individualized ads shown to its eight million addressable households. The ads in question would come from the two minutes per hour of local commercial time in programming DISH enjoys, and would playback in both live and DVR-recorded TV. Most people would call that "programmatic TV". But not [...]

LAS VEGAS – How do you determine where a line should be if it is constantly shifting? The line in question is consumers’ tolerance for ads in digital and traditional television programming and it changes along with their changing preferences, according to Nielsen’s President of U.S. Media. Lynda Clarizio says Nielsen’s two-day Consumer 360 conference has the word “consumer” in the [...]

CANNES -- In the emerging world of digital video advertising, now personalized ads can be made, on-the-fly, by assembling disparate scenes from alternate narratives in to a single, audience-specific ad spot. That's the theory. So who's responsible for the execution? Truth is, the new practice of dynamic ad creative is still shaking out - and whether it should be owned by creators, targeters [...]

CANNES -- During its nine years as a digital marketing platform, Jivox has stayed relatively under the radar during what have been the boom years of the discipline. But now the company, whose IQ platform is used by clients including Bayer, Bose, Condé Nast, Toyota and Johnson & Johnson, is enjoying another time in the sun, after a recent investment. In June, the company [...]

CANNES – Do data and technology that can enhance consumer television and video targeting for advertisers want to be open and uniform, or do they want to reside behind walled gardens? What started as a discussion about programmatic TV ads led to the bigger issue of openness, sharing and uniformity at a Carat-sponsored panel moderated by Doug Ray, the company’s [...]

CANNES -- Talking about the imperative to deliver and measure ads across platforms is one thing, doing it is another. Digital video ad-tech outfit FreeWheel says it sees a "tipping point" coming after the recent US TV upfronts season saw a range of new formats and techniques debut. But it is already seeing a march from traditional desktop internet video, to internet-enabled TV platforms. "If you [...]

CANNES -- Digital data, and the ability to harness it to better target advertising messages, is one of the greatest transformational forces in marketing. But the zeal with which executives are embracing the transformation reads like a menu of enthusiasm. Slavi Samardzija, global CEO of Annalect, the New York-based data analytics consulting and technology company for marketers, says: "I think the industry is divided on [...]

CANNES – I think it's fair to say we're in a golden age of television," says Karl Spangenberg, SVP at powerhouse consultancy MediaLink. Beet.TV spoke with him during Cannes Lions. While user-generated content has driven audiences, it's also created concern on the part of traditional television. But,  Spangenberg says, traditional TV is once again at the forefront of providing a platform [...]

It is a tremendous new advertising opportunity - but agencies are going to have to think a little differently if they want to get results from using video advertising on Facebook. That's the message the social network itself has been pushing out to agencies in the last few months, and agencies appear to be getting the message: when silent, auto-playing video ads scroll [...]