CANNES - It is just two months now since Comcast-owned video ad-tech enabler FreeWheel acquired France-based TV ad-tech platform StickyADS, as it looked to extend its US digital ad expertise in to European TV. We have heard lots about the complementarity of the two companies. But what does the deal mean for existing and new customers of the joined-up entity? FreeWheel strategic development VP Brian [...]

CANNES -  With numbers this big, it's no wonder ad-tech vendors re vying to turn even the traditional media space programmatic. "Worldwide, (advertising) is $170bn, in the US it’s $77bn," according to Herve Brunet, CEO and co-founder of StickyADS, one TV ad-tech vendor recently acquired by another. "The linear side of TV is eventually going to go programmatic. Even if 20% of that [...]

CANNES -- Data is a buzzword in the media business, and data is widely available. But data only works when structure is applied to it, says Wendy Clark, ‎CEO at DDB Worldwide, North America in this interview with Beet.TV. "Everyone has data, but it's largely unstructured. The key is making it useful and structured. Making it intelligent. Data needs to be turned into intelligence and we [...]

CANNES – Even though the Havas trading desk has reduced bot and non-human traffic for its clients’ advertising campaigns to under 5%, it’s “a constant worry” to Dominique Delport. The Global Managing Director of Havas Media Group believes the online advertising paradigm has to be completely re-shifted. “I think enough is enough for consumers,” Delport says in an interview with Beet.TV. [...]

CANNES -- The advertising technology industry is now replete with metrics and currencies. What if there was another one added to the mix? The chief of a programmatic firm acquired by Group M's Xaxis division is advocating a switch of focus. "We (as an industry) have been talking a lot about performance metrics and if people buy something," according to Sebastiaan Schepers, whose Netherlands-based [...]

CANNES -- Twelve months after it launched an ability for advertisers to introduce custom logic to ad buying, AppNexus claims 25 clients are using the tool. Last year, the ad-tech platform bowed AppNexus Programmable Bidder (APB), a way for buyers to connect with AppNexus via API. One part of that was Bonsai -  a way to let  advertisers "decide the values of distinct impression parameters [...]

CANNES -- One of the hottest topics in advertising right now is dynamic creative - the ability to tailor not just the buying of inventory in real-time, but the message served in the ad, too. Numerous software vendors are now offering ad buyers variants of this customization, and Group M's Xaxis says it can be pretty powerful, even when just some basic [...]

CANNES -- Across the industry, ad execs are coming to realize that integrating brand messages in to content could lead to better impacts, could even save an ad industry that is fast becoming concerned about a consumer revolt. Native advertising is becoming big business, and product placement is growing bigger than ever. The only problem? Developing an industry-wide system for commissioning the stuff. In this [...]

CANNES -- Two watchwords were on the lips of most advertising execs who gathered at the Cannes Lions festival this year. One was "authenticity". The other, "transparency". Across the industry, advertisers - alarmed by the revelation that many ad views are invoked without a real human audience - are aiming for full visibility of audience data, and a thorough understanding of what their [...]

CANNES -- The tech industry sure does like to trump up certain software as the next big thing. All the while, the advertising industry, too, has been worrying that certain technological developments could cause it the mother of all headaches. So, what's the truth - and which of the recent trends are overblown? On a panel of agency execs convened at the Cannes [...]

Advertising is changing faster, perhaps, than it ever has. Today, new platforms offer a new creative palette for agencies to make messages - and new challenges present limitations on their scope. Underneath all that change, however, lays the kernel of the same, enduring construct - storytelling. That's according to an agency creative who has devised campaigns for the likes of Dell, Chevron and Motorola whose [...]

As they approach Facebook for clients, it would be easy for a lazy agency to simply re-trot the creative assets they had already produced for legacy media or other digital outlets. But that would be missing the point - new channels demand new approaches, and new approaches reward creatives, according to one advertising leader. "Every time they create a new tool or a new [...]

CANNES - In light of a successful TV Upfront season and other developments, there is an "obvious" shift from an "over application" of digital video to TV or premium video in decision making of marketers, says Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Advertising Sales & Client Partnerships, NBC Universal, in this interview with Beet.TV This video was recorded at Cannes Lions 2016 at a Beet.TV leadership [...]

CANNES -- One screen good, two screens better... but, in households with multiple people and multiple devices, how are advertisers and content owners supposed to understand consumption anymore? That's where media measurement agencies come in - and that's why digital measurer comScore agreed to merge with TV mesaurement firm Rentrak last year. The outcome - a combined measurement powerhouse for a mixed-media world. "Planning [...]

CANNES -  This year's Cannes Lions was notable for its deal making and the formation of "serious" partnerships, says Wenda Harria Millard, COO of the powerhouse consultancy MediaLink, in this interview with Beet.TV She says it was "different" this year as many of the most of the media "moguls" descended on the French Riviera -- several for the first time. Moreover, she [...]

CANNES - Having been the long time editor of Britain's Daily Mirror, with a circulation of over 2 million, Piers Morgan now finds his influence on a bigger scale, with his 5 million followers on Twitter. As editor-at-large for the Daily Mail, he says that his use of Twitter can often time garner 2 million views for his articles and says that [...]

LAS VEGAS –The term “paid plus co-op sort of mentality” could well describe a mountain commune, but it’s an understated way of explaining the huge data nexus that Experian Marketing Services and Neustar hope to become under their new partnership. Among other things, advertisers will be able to pool their data for mutual benefit. In a nutshell, the partnership lets advertisers [...]

LAS VEGAS  - Experian Marketing Services and Neustar have upped the ante in the ongoing arms race that is the onboarding and activation of offline, first-party data to more precisely plan and measure cross-platform advertising campaigns. Their partnership announced today also brings new potential for identifying and targeting viewers in addressable television households. The two consumer data giants say their pooled [...]

CANNES -- A couple of years back, video ad-tech outfit Ooyala acquired peer Videoplaza to combine geographic footprints and technological capabilities in a single company. Now the joined-up outfit is going to market. "We have invested in the ad-tech business since acquiring Videoplaza a couple of years ago," Ooyala programmatic GM Scott Braley tells Beet.TV on the company's first visit to Cannes Lions. "We are now [...]

CANNES -- If you Google "ad agency disintermediation", you won't fail to see the debate. With countless advertising and marketing technology platforms now on offer to help brands plan, buy and understand their communications, people are starting to wonder - is the ad agency over? In other words, will clients begin to run more of their own marketing themselves? A panel of ad industry [...]