FORT LAUDERDALE -- Although the advertising industry spent last year assessing ad tech vendor claims that addressable TV was ready for prime-time, things seemed to have settled in to a consensus in which many now realize the reality of wholesale change is not yet imminent. Ad agency SMG has already reported a tripling in client addressable TV business last year And SMG's director Steve Murtos [...]

While mobile usage of all kinds has grown in leaps and bounds, mobile ad spend hadn't yet caught up, but that's due to change, says Richy Glassberg, CEO at WWP-owned ad serving firm Medialets, in this interview with Beet.TV.  Expect a huge upswing in ad dollars in the next few years to keep pace with the consumer usage that is skyrocketing, he [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Shareholders of comScore and Rentrak are due to vote on a merger of the two companies, via the former's proposed acquisition of the latter, on Thursday, in a move that will be a big deal for the advertising and content measurement industry. The pair plan to combine to pool comScore's online analytics nous with Rentrak's historic strength in measuring TV [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- When many vendors think about the emerging technology "dynamic ad insertion" (DAI), they think about ads inserted, on the fly, in to live programming playing out through digital media. But what's dynamic can also me added to what is static. New York cable operator Cablevision is eyeing up the application of dynamic ads to shows recorded via customers' set-top [...]

LONDON -- In the digital media ecosystem, disintermediation lurks around every corner. With so much of the advertising industry in flux, it is easy for an incumbent player to be dislodged by market forces. European satellite operator, channel owner and telco Sky is fighting against that tide when it comes to next-generation advertising, launching an analytics suite for its its AdSmart addressable TV service. "I think [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Cars have proved that addressable TV advertising can work, now credit cards are ready to attest to its efficiency. The new concept means brands can advertise only to relevant segments of TV viewers, targeted at the household level, cutting out wasted spend. Joanna Thissen, targeted TV division at Modi Media, Group M's division working on addressable, says car makers were the first [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- "Addressable TV", the practice of targeting individual households' TV sets based on data characteristics, may have been the hot industry topic of 2015 - but Invidi, the Princeton, NJ-based ad tech vendor enabling broadcast operators with the technology, has already been doing so for 14 years now. The company already has traction, and the pace of change it [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- A year ago, only 15% of US senior ad buyers reported using programmatic for TV ads, according to a survey. Herein lays the contradiction of this much-hyped technology - many are tantalized by the possibilities of super-targeting TV advertising and automating their trading, but the promise is not yet fully a reality. "Everyone proclaimed that the year was the year of [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks - but that's exactly what is going to happen in media, as old-fashioned linear TV begins learning some of the ad targeting tactics digital advertisers have long enjoyed. That change is happening because, as TVs or TV boxes get connected to the internet and enabled with software services, the way content [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- The world of advertising technology is opening up impressive prospects for ever more refined targeting of TV and video audiences. That is what we cover regularly here on Beet.TV, and that is the trend seen by Ashish Chordia, CEO of Alphonso, an ad tech company helping advertisers harness device data to target those ads on multiple devices. "There is [...]

LAS VEGAS --Marketers need to ensure that they are reaching consumers not only at the moment of purchase, but years before when they are beginning to develop affinity for products, says Scott Ferber, Chairman and CEO of Videology, in this taped interview from CES. For example, if a car buyer first hears about a Lexus when the buyer is in the market [...]

LAS VEGAS -- Historically, Hollywood has fought P2P piracy with legal action. But what if studios and channel operators could solve the download problem with advertising? That's what TruOptik thinks could happen. The Stamford, CT, company's technology employs "census-level measurement of peer-to-peer file sharing across the BitTorrent protocol" to create "the largest, IP-based non-cookie-reliant data set of entertainment behavior in the world", according to [...]

LAS VEGAS -- Many web publishers have made a great business - and a big audience - out of online video. Now, could the last mile may be taking that video to the big screen in the living room? Xumo hopes so. The joint venture between Panasonic and MySpace's latest owner, Viant, is a software layer for connected TV devices from Panasonic, LG [...]

AOL announced a "strategic alliance" with Taboola for content discovery and recommendation.   The Taboola platform, which recommends content to users on various platforms, will be widely used across AOL media brands in the U.S. and Canada. The Wall Street Journal reports that as part of the deal AOL will take an equity stake in Taboola. In July, we spoke with Taboola [...]

Marco Bertozzi, who had been at the Publicis' VivaKi unit, as President of Global Clients, has transitioned to a corporate role at Starcom MediaVest as CEO of Performance Marketing, a new position. According to the report in Digiday which first reported the news, his job will be: to draw on SMG’s current resources both from existing brands such as content agencies Liquid Thread [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Some media companies, especially the smaller ones, just don't have the kind of scaled inventory many advertisers are looking for. So Operative, an ad tech platform operator which lets publishers manage their online ad space, is encouraging some of its customers to pool their slots. The outfit says it is launching a program called "partner premium". "it’s really designed for all these [...]

LONDON -- European satellite operator, channel owner and telco Sky has been pioneering the cross-over of digital media and TV ad sales these last couple of years, notably launching Sky AdSmart, its addressable TV offering, allowing advertisers to target individual households. Then, in October, the company bowed AdVance, a suite knitting together data from across its many screens to better target consumers. So what [...]

LONDON -- While analyst data continues to point to a downturn in TV activity and an up-tick in cord-cutting in the US, over in the UK television is barely in a death spiral at all. There are many reasons for that - for one, quality content and attractive online services are proving so popular that the BBC is moving one of its linear channels [...]

LONDON -- This new year is expected to bring bigger developments in the enablement of buying TV ads with rapid decisioning, using programmatic technology. At least, that's what ad agency SMG's UK co-CEO Pippa Glucklich hopes. SMG's use of addressable TV is taking off in the States. But that's not the same in every market. "The UK market is ... off to a very [...]

LAS VEGAS -  After its $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV and its alliance with Opera Mediaworks, AT&T AdWorks is delivering addressable ads to the household at scale via its cable and satellite boxes and to IP devices, says  AT&T's Matthew Van Houten, Director, Strategy and Business Development. We spoke with him earlier this month at CES for this update on the evolving AT&T [...]