LAS VEGAS -- Time was, artists rejected the overtures of marketers. In a little-known example, R.E.M. once rejected Microsoft's lucrative request to use "It's The End Of The World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" in its Windows 95 TV commercial, leaving that honour to The Rolling Stones. In these days of cashflow uncertainty, however, many bands and singers are only [...]

LAS VEGAS - Here are some of the take ways from CES 2016 as seen by Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp and frequestn commentator on Beet.TV More Devices, More Touchpoints,  More Connections Mean More Data: "The ever increasing number of devices, connections and consumer touchpoints mean more data and more ways to reach consumers and audiences", says Swartz. This [...]

LAS VEGAS -- The last couple of years were pretty big ones for digital video supply-side advertising platform and programmatic marketplace SpotX. In July 2014, the big European broadcaster RTL Group acquired a controlling interest in the company. Then, last year, the outfit rebranded from its former name, SpotXchange, as it gained traction in Europe thanks to the RTL deal. At the end [...]

LAS VEGAS - While advances in targeted digital media advertising have become increasing powerful, the creative side of has become "anemic" - and needs to be addressed, says Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with him last night at CES about advertising and the big year of 2015 at AOL which included its [...]

LAS VEGAS -- Over the last couple of years, the giant European TV RTL Group has assembled a clutch of investments designed to advance its position in digital video. In the summer, the group even rolled them up in to a division called RTL Digital Hub. Now the Hub is on the hunt for more ad-tech acquisitions. "We will also look for further investment [...]

LAS VEGAS -- CES no longer attracts just geeks and tech journalists. This year, swarms of ad agency and ad-tech delegates are in Las Vegas to soak up what's next in gadgets and software. Speaking from there, Havas Media Group global MD Dominique Delport concludes: "Every marketer should become a user experience designer. We are now living with apps. The way we interact [...]

LAS VEGAS -  The nations' biggest newspaper publisher is making a considerable play with VR (virtual reality). It will involve the participation of many of chain's 3000 journalists, a daily VR show, a widely distributed cardboard viewer and a number of advertising offerings around the new medium. For an overview on Gannett's commitment and plans for VR, we spoke with Kevin [...]

LAS VEGAS - The vast changes in media, technology and data have dramatically transformed  the advertising industry. Indeed the changes have transformed the very nature of the world's largest media and advertising company WPP, says its founder and CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, in this interview with Beet.TV He sees CES as sort of metaphor for WPP:  a place where content, data [...]

LAS VEGAS --  WPP's GroupM, a longtime investor in the Los Angeles based MCN Fullscreen, has announced a production alliance with Fullscreen for the creation and marketing of original video for a range of the giant agency's clients. Whilst the two have been collaborating for some time, the alliance, called Playa, involves the commitment of a dedicated joint work force based [...]

LAS VEGAS - The importance of CES is the networking, not the human interactions of the 150K attendees, but the development of  "nodes and connections."  It is all about how  brands can participate in a new, deeply connected world, says Carl Fremont, Global Chief Digital Officer of MEC, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with him for our series "The Road [...]

With the commercial launch this month of Oculus Rift and the attention around virtual reality and other data related to wearables, we are seeing is the digitalization of the physical world and that will have a profound impact on marketing and media says Jack Smith, Chief Technology Officer of GroupM Connect Worldwide, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with Smith about [...]

While extraordinary progress has been made with targeting ads to specific individuals -- and with it considerable upside for both marketers and content owners, but there is a possibility that advanced targeting will leave out key audiences which are not known and can't be addressed There is a chance that targeting could lead marketers to "invisibility" warns Rob Norman, Global Chief Digital Officer [...]

While brand measurement has been well established across media, it has not been fully effective with mobile advertising. That could change with the integration of Medialet's ad trafficking platform, Servo, with Millward Brown Digital's Ignite Network. The the two WPP units announced the product offering today. For an overview on brand measurement via mobile and implications of the alliance with Millward Brown, we [...]

In the course of just the past year,  Facebook has moved from being a social platform to becoming a new way in which people consume media, says Jordan Bitterman, Chief Strategy Officer at Mindshare, in this interview with Beet.TV Facebook is a "juggernaut" that improves by reinvesting and by providing marketers with a powerful data offering, he adds. We spoke with Bitterman at [...]

FreeWheel, a pioneering adtech company  that enables many of the world's leading digital video publishers manage dynamic ad insertion, has unveiled a solution that allows insertion into linear television. The company is making available its Hybrid Linear Digital Ad-Scheduler (HyLDA), a program that enables premium video publishers to plan, optimize and manage live content using a combination of spot scheduling and dynamic [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE  -  If you want to price digital advertising appropriately, don't just look at the rapidly-growing supply of inventory, look beneath the surface for what is really real. That's according to veteran ad exec Irwin Gotlieb, the chairman of ad group GroupM. "Supply measured without taking in to account things like viewability and bought fraud wasn’t real supply anyway," he [...]

REDWOOD CITY, CA - Video adtech company YuMe was the first to integrate advertising directly to smart TV's in a major way with its activation with LG and Toyota some five years ago. Today, its alliance with top manufacturers has expanded - as has its collaboration with set-top box companies, says Michael Hudes, EVP in this interview with Beet.TV Hudes explains the opportunities [...]

Recent industry reports say that advertising revenue from digital media will surpass television this year.  It will be a moment that industry veteran Wenda Harris Millard had doodled as a fantasy headline some 20 years ago, when she was a senior executive at Doubleclick in the early and uncertain days of ad tech, she tells Beet.TV in this interview. We sat down [...]

Fraud, malware and pirated sites are costing the digital media industry over $8 billion a year.   While the problem pervades all digital media, the highest percentage of invalid traffic is for mobile video at 12 percent, says Nick Terlizzi, Partner, Media and Entertainment Advisory Services at Ernst & Young LLP in this interview with Beet.TV E&Y & the IAB collaborated on a [...]

While consumers enjoy a vast array of devices to watch video, the gadget diversity presents publishers and marketers with a significant amount of "leakage" -- meaning views that are not tabulated. Facing this challenge, the industry will move to more robust cross-screen measurements in the new year, says Peter Naylor, SVP at Hulu and head of the IAB's video section, in [...]