In the past 10 years, since the WPP-owned global brand consultancy Millward Brown has tracked the value of brands with its BRANDZ 100 rankings, there have been many changes.  Over that period, nearly half of the companies have changed.  This upheaval  has been powered by two major factors:  geography and technology innovation observes Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO and founder of [...]

CANNES - As addressable TV advertising emerges, so are a number of companies including Visible World (recently bought by Comcast), Clypd, Simulmedia and others.  For the new medium to succeed, one essential will be companies that focus on yield management around addressable TV, says investment banker Terence Kawaja. Kawaja is CEO of LUMA partners, a boutique investment bank in the adtech and [...]

CANNES - Comcast's data from its twenty millions set-top boxes, coupled with marketers' first party data, will create a "whole new world" for NBC Universal, for both advertising and content creation, explains Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Advertising Sales and Client Partnerships in this this interview with Beet.TV Comcast has been expanding its addressable technology via acquisitions including the recent one of Visible World. She [...]

It was a WPP agency that devised The Financial Times' once-famous marketing slogan, "No FT, no comment." So, what does WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell think of Pearson's sale of its newspaper to Japan's Nikkei for £844m ($1.3bn) this week? Speaking with Beet.TV in this video interview, Sorrell urges Nikkei to thaw an approach to advertisers he suggests had become rigid under Pearson. "I’ve [...]

When considering setbacks over the course of his career, J. Walter Thompson’s Non-Executive Chairman Bob Jeffrey thinks of losing accounts, which he always took “very personally and emotionally.” In particular, he remembers when the agency lost most of its Microsoft business. “That was very painful because I thought we had done great work, and there are times when you lose business and [...]

CANNES – "I think what clients are looking for from agencies now is a partner that helps them navigate," says Lyle Tick, chief growth officer for J. Walter Thompson. "And that’s a lot of what we’ve been doing at J. Walter is restructuring ourselves in order to deliver those types of solutions to our clients and that kind of leadership." Earlier [...]

CANNES -- The $72 billion US TV advertising industry is premised on making 30-second spots that target consumers. Imagine what happens when TV sets give advertisers the cues they need to target customers individually. Michael Bologna, president of GroupM's Modi Media division, which is working on just that proposition, says 2015 is the year it has begun to happen - but [...]

These days, Pets.com is part of internet folklore - an early dot.com juggernaut that, in its mission to sell pet supplies direct to consumers, burned bright, launching in August 1998 and going from an IPO to liquidation in 268 days. Carolyn Everson remembers the site with horror, too - but, for different reasons. Everson says the idea for a pet retail site was hers. Whilst in her [...]

CANNES -- When considering the future of media over the next decade, the Daily Mail’s North America CEO Jon Steinberg thinks we have to be open to what may have seemed impossible even two years ago. “When I look at my 6-year-old daughter, I’m pretty sure she’s not going to drive a car,” he says in an interview with Beet.TV recorded [...]

CANNES -- In one form or another, David Kenny’s career has been all about data, from the advertiser, agency and publisher perspective. Now The Weather Company’s CEO and chairman, Kenny was previously a president at Akamai, a managing partner of VivaKi, and a founder of Digitas. In his first job at Bain, he learned from the company’s current chairman Orit Gadiesh [...]

CANNES – “Certainly the speed of technology innovation is dizzying,” says Cary Tilds, chief innovation officer for GroupM. “Some say it would be nearly impossible to keep up with that change.” Tilds' four tips for keeping up are to be a student of technology; to maintain a consistent framework for learning about new technologies; to understand what you already have so [...]

CANNES -- Addressable TV has been in development for the last decade, but only now is it beginning to reach scale. That means that gross ratings points, or GRPs, may be starting to become obsolete. “You know what’s really silly?” says Michael Bologna, president of GroupM’s Modi Media, in a panel discussion at Cannes recorded by Beet.TV. “Asking 20,000 people what they [...]

Byron Lewis formed UniWorld Group, an African-American and multi-cultural agency, in 1969. But seven or eight years later, his venture capital was running out, and the agency was failing to make enough money to keep the lights on. One big problem the agency had been up against was that there were almost no media outlets focused on minorities, apart from Ebony [...]

CANNES - We are living in the "golden age" of television which is being populated by an unprecedented amount of premium programming, says Liz Dolan CMO of Fox International Channels.   For advertisers, this represents new opportunities - including powerful brand association with shows via social media, she explains. She cites the "Walking Dead" as an example of extreme social engagement.   [...]

"Uninterrupted," a video site of videos by prominent athletes had its official launch in Los Angeles this week.   In Cannes last month, we interviewed James' longtime business partner and childhood friend Maverick Carter about their new venture which is being published in partnership with the Bleacher Report.  The series initially launched last December. We spoke with Carter after his session [...]

CANNES -- After "programmatic" methods of refining and automating the planning and buying of digital display ads took off, many are wondering when the same technology will get traction in the TV world. But that's the wrong question to ask, according to GroupM global chairman Irwin Gotlieb. He says the same approaches have been used since TV ad buyers started using demographic data in [...]

CANNES - Teads, the video platform that powers video advertising into the text articles of many of the world's top publishers including Forbes, the Guardian, the Washington Post and Le Monde, has grown quickly from its origins in Paris to be a global company which is now booking most of its revenue in the U.S. At Cannes, we spoke with Pierre [...]

Historically, video ads that start automatically on the desktop has been seen as an annoyance.  On mobile device, in the Facebook news feed, it is a "delight" says Facebook's global ad sales chief Carolyn Everson in this interview with Beet.TV Everson says that new forms of advertising, which are generally under 10 seconds, are finding traction with a range of marketers [...]

As cord-cutting continues to gain momentum and video-streaming options abound, Cablevision’s chief operating officer Kristin Dolan is trying to transform her company into a service-oriented business like American Express or Zappos. “To me, we’re at a critical inflection point where the world is changing and we’re no longer a monopoly, and we’re a company that delivers the internet to people’s homes,” [...]

CANNES - Joe Ripp has seen about as many incarnations of Time Inc. as there have been in the digital era. Joining in 1985 as an assistant comptroller, he eventually became SVP, CFO treasurer of the company in 1993 and, a few years later, served a AOL vice-chairman until 2004. After leaving the stable for senior roles in pharmaceutical, marketing services and [...]