LONDON -- God forbid the idea that marketers are not sentient. But sentience is also coming to the world of automated advertising, in the shape of artificial intelligence. That's the name of a book, Sentience, released by Omnicom agency PHD earlier this year. "Anybody in marketing needs to understand a bit about AI," says PHD's worldwide CEO Mike Cooper. "It’s the next really big thing [...]

Viacom is aiming to be a "pioneer" in delivering video advertising on a one-to-one, or addressable basis, says Julian Zilberbrand, Executive Vice President, Audience Science, in this interview with Beet.TV Coupled with the ad delivery, will be the development of essential attribution modeling, he adds. Zilberbrand recently joined Viacom in the new position from ZenithOptimedia where served as Executive Vice President. Also in [...]

Ad blocking software is being used by as many as 40 percent of German  desktop users  -  and it is nearing 20 percent in the United States.  For some demographics, use in the U.S. is as high as 50 percent.  As the issue becomes increasingly critical,  there needs to be a transparent value exchange between publishers, advertisers and consumers, says Ben [...]

LONDON-   Cablevision, a large U.S. regional cable and Internet provider, long a pioneer in offering addressable TV advertising, has made its first "upfront" deal with Modi Media, the advanced TV unit of WPP.  It is a longterm partnership around addressable advertising. At the Future of TV Advertising Forum in London earlier this month, we interviewed Ben Tatta, President of Cablevision Media Sales, [...]

SAN FRANCISCO  -- Programmatic buying buying has become a "huge component" of our business, says Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicom Digital, in this interview with Beet.TV  The "next big wave" will be dynamic creative advertising tied to the programmatic buy, he says. We spoke with him last month in San Francisco about emergence of new vertical video formats, innovation in Silicon Valley [...]

Insights gleaned from the acres of show floor space at CES will not about the latest curved TV screens, it will be the "bits in the middle" -- meaning innovations taking place between the two "poles" at the show:  one being "immersive" experiences like VR and passive, and the other sensor-based technologies like smart appliances and apparel, says Rob Norman,Global [...]

LONDON -- Leading UK satcaster, telco and channel operator Sky has used FreeWheel for the last few years, to manage its digital video ad inventory. Now it will deploy the company's platforms more widely, as it begins to consolidate its operations across Europe. The former BSkyB of the UK completed a £7bn merger with its sister companies in Germany and Italy in November. That means [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Fragmented content consumption has given rise to platforms that help advertisers and buyers aiming to put measurement back together. The only problem? They're fragmented, too! Does any of this matter? Some marketers are becoming excited about the prospect of unifying ad measurements in to a single, holistic metric. But is that feasible? An entertaining panel convened at Beet.TV's recent executive retreat debated... comScore executive [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -  The opportunity for satellite and cable operators to serve specific ads on the household level, so called "addressable" advertising, is set to grow from 3-4X in the year ahead, making it the fast growing sector of the television business predicts Chris Monteferrante, VP of National Sales of AT&T AdWorks, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with him last [...]

AdMore, a platform which aggregates unsold local TV inventory into targeted buys for national advertisers, is seeing dramatic growth says CEO Brendan Condon in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with him about untapped value of local television, establishments of a marketplace using Nielsen as the currency and the prospects for addressable advertising to become part of this. We spoke with him [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE - We hear a lot about the opportunities for cable and satellite operators to glean rich data from set-top boxes and deliver "addressable" ads to specific consumers.   For local TV stations, that set-top information is not available. But other forms of data is actionable -- and a consortium of nine local broadcast groups under the Pearl TV banner, is [...]

It's been a big year for brand marketers. With a reported $25 billion set to change hands as agency accounts came up for renewal, this year was both a threat and an opportunity. In truth, so-called "Pitchapalooza" has been about more than just beauty contests for contract renewal - it's also about establishing which agencies have digital chops in the booming age of data-driven [...]

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), an advertising industry initiative to fight criminal activity in the digital advertising supply chain, announced earlier this month that many of the world’s largest brand advertisers and agencies have pledged to require their ad partners to take aggressive steps to help fight the $2.4 billion lost to pirate sites each year. We sat down with TAG's [...]

Part guide, part information curator and super networker, the powerhouse media consultancy MediaLink will provide a number of services to its 90 clients who will be in attendance at next month's CES in Las Vegas. Among the topics of particular interest at the show will be innovations in augmented reality, predicts Wenda Harris Millard, president and COO. In addition to its client activities, MediaLink [...]

LONDON -- One theory holds that super-targeted and automated online ads can most benefit companies that sell products, because campaign outcomes can be tracked all the way through to purchase. But that doesn't have to mean mere product manufacturers - which, traditionally, rely on someone else to sell their stuff - have to be left out, says Candice Odhams, EMEA engagement director of WPP's Xaxis programmatic advertising [...]

LONDON -- We are working in an age where technology seems to make everything possible - from uncovering the ad views that never happened, to producing the ultimate, all-encompassing metric for advertising experienced across screen types. But is the industry too busy debating the potential, complex future measurement systems to notice that they are already here? "I have to smile a little bit about [...]

LONDON -- The organization charged with measuring UK TV viewing for channels' advertisers, Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB), used to be critized for its traditionalist approach to the task - a 5,1oo-household panel method supposed to represent country-wide viewing in a multi-media age. But BARB is reinventing itself. The organisation already measures consumers' digital viewing of core broadcasters' shows, and separately measures viewing by census [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- As clients move deeper into data-driven marketing, the key is to look across the portfolio to understand which inventory is most valuable for using data in new ways, says Brent Gaskamp, business development SVP at Videology in an interview with Beet.TV. "We try to help our partners understand their business from a portfolio perspective. How to look at a [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- A&E is focused on providing deeper digital measurement in 2016 via partnerships with both Nielsen and Comscore, says Lee Boykoff, VP Digital Analytics and CRM at A&E Networks in an interview with Beet.TV. As digital viewership grows on mobile and TV everywhere platforms, it becomes even more vital to understand the full scope of their usage. "We are seeing [...]

LONDON -- Respected UK public broadcaster Channel 4 may be a public broadcaster - but, unlike the BBC, it still has to raise its own funds commercially. So, the company is hoping its coming-soon PVX programmatic video trading platform will give it a foundation to reap more of the money coming in to programmatic. Announced in November following a year-long pilot on Freewheel's [...]