CANNES  -- Over the last year, with more brands embracing ad tech platforms to undertake advertising activity themselves, and as more top-tier brands put their agency accounts back out to review, many have begun to wonder - is the ad agency over? But Bob Pittman doesn't see it that way. Pittman, who oversaw the creation of MTV, led AOL Networks and now is CEO [...]

CANNES -- Addressable TV promises to be a powerful tool for reaching consumers at scale with creative that’s carefully targeted to them, but how much lift are marketers who are investing in it actually seeing? “You’re seeing 50, 60, 70% increase in sales lift,” says Tracey Scheppach, SMG’s EVP-Precision Video Director, in a panel discussion at Cannes that was recorded by [...]

CANNES - While agency clients want to have complete transparency over what they buy programmatically and prefer to buy in a private exchange, there is room for buying in an open marketplace, explains Adam Shlachter, Chief Investment Officer of Digitas LBi i this interview. We spoke with him about the advertising industry transition to an automated marketplace during the Cannes Lions Festival. Shlachter was panelist on [...]

CANNES -- The fact that many the world’s biggest brands recently started to review their long-held agency relations, putting them out to tender once again, is making agencies nervous but will refocus their minds on results, according to one agency boss. Adweek reports, in the last six months, as advertising technology opportunities swirl around them, 20 big brands like Coca-Cola and L'Oreal have reviewed [...]

CANNES -  Native advertising was very much part of the conversation at Cannes Lions with the BBC and others announcing ambitious initiatives.  One of the most talked about was the announcement of a joint venture between WPP, Snapchat and the Daily Mail around a native advertising initiative called Truffle Pig. At Cannes, we spoke with Rob Norman, Chief Digital Officer of GroupM [...]

CANNES - An app that allows women in Turkey to ask for help by simply shaking their phone, won the Media Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Festival last month. The use of technology and media by "NGO" like organizations for public good was one of the most creative and important trends at Cannes Lions says Nick Emery, who headed the [...]

CANNES - Much has been said over the past year about the issue of advertising fraud and  the danger it poses to the ad tech industry.   This was a contentious topic of conversation at the recent Rubicon Project rooftop session during the Cannes Lions Festival. After the session, we spoke with moderator, Jay Sears, SVP at the Rubicon Project about the [...]

Facebook has launched an "alpha" version of a revenue share scenario with video producers.   The split is based on consumer interaction with the video, explains Carolyn Everson, VP of Global Marketing Solutions in this video interview with Beet.TV The arrangement is quite new and there is "no money changing hands" at moment.  Facebook will share 55 percent of the revenue with [...]

CANNES -- BBC News has managed to mix online video and text since the late 1990s. But why keep the two separate? Now the organization is ensuring both are on-screen at the same time, launching a product called "stick video". "The idea is that the video player moves with you on the screen,"BBC Global News sales and marketing director Chris Davies tells Beet.TV [...]

CANNES -- The CEO of video ad planning, buying and execution tech platform Videology acknowledges, right now: "The vast majority of television-based media is not fully addressable." So he imagines a world where, today, technology supports TV ad buying that is merely "data-informed", evolving later "all the way up to fully addressable". With New York-based Videology, Ferber says: "Agency holding companies and media [...]

CANNES -- Since the value that addressable TV delivers is widely understood, what’s hampering its adoption?  Investment banker and CEO of LUMA Partners Terence Kawaja asks these panelists in a session taped aboard the AT&T AdWorks yacht. The mindset of big brands accustomed to the notion that they can buy a massive audience of adults from 18 to 49 is a [...]

CANNES -- One of the biggest benefits of data is that it can personalize the media business, especially through video, says David Kenny, Chairman and CEO at the Weather Company, in this interview with Beet.TV  from the Cannes Lions Festival. "Weather is this place that is very personal, very local, uses enormous amounts of data and you can combine it with a video story [...]

CANNES -- When the Media Ratings Council specced out what truly constitutes a "viewable" ad impression, in a world increasingly falling victim to fraudulent ads, ad buyers rejoiced. And then the whole system began fragmenting. Now, it seems, some customers are getting confused about which viewability trackers are right. "As viewability becomes more and more a transitionary element of how people are buying media, [...]

CANNES -- During a panel discussion at Cannes Lions, disagreement broke out over how much ad buyers should know about the so-called "transparency" in ad network and programmatic practices. "If the agency and the client can have a very clean discussion about what is the value of the offer and what is the fee they charge, it is no one else's business [...]

CANNES -- Many brands are now beginning to take the opportunity to buy ads through programmatic platforms purely under their own steam, rather than enlisting ad-buying agencies. But what is the experience like? Whilst such a feat is eminently possible, Michael Brunick, partner in programmatic ad advisory service Unbound, says: "Several brands we've been working with have been doing programmatic for a while, but they've no [...]

CANNES -- The large number of media accounts currently up for review comes down largely to issues of pricing, trust and transparency, according to Lou Paskalis, Bank of America’s SVP-Global Media Investment. “We are in an upheaval we’ve never seen before in this business, and marketers realize they need a new pathway to market, and they’re going to invest their dollars differently,” [...]

CANNES -- This summer has become known as the season for media agency pitches, and clients are most eager for "tools and people," says Jordan Bitterman, Chief Strategist of Mindshare NA.  "Most of the clients are public companies and they are in a cycle. There are three times a year that we do a review process with clients and reach out [...]

CANNES -  Something dramatic happened to TV viewing about 18 months ago: Aggregate viewing dropped.  This has happened in large part as audiences moved  to video-on-demand and the measurement services which have not been up to the task, says Irwin Gotlieb, chairman of WPP's GroupM unit. He says that some 70 percent of the drop in viewership is do to audience "mismeasurement." He attributes some [...]

CANNES -- Video has become a core focus of Daily Mail's news service, says Jon Steinberg, CEO of Daily Mail North America, in this segment recorded the Cannes Lions Festival. Daily Mail generates 80 million video views each month, and licenses videos from AP, Reuters, Getty and others, with one million visits a day to its home page in the United States, he says [...]

CANNES -- Heineken may not be able to take advantage of everything programmatic ad buying techniques offer - but that doesn't mean it can't use programmatic technology to better understand its customers. USA region senior media director Ron Amram tells a Cannes Lions panel discussion: "We are not big users of data, we don't have a lot of first-party data, because of the three-tier [...]