The opportunity for advertisers to deliver TV ads to specific homes , via cable and satellite boxes and connected TV's is "totally transformational" and it is happening now, says Irwin Gotlieb, Chairman of  GroupM,  WPP's media buying umbrella group.  He says the media industry of the future  will see 2015 as the the year that addressable TV became viable. At next week's [...]

CHICAGO -- What are the biggest and most exciting trends affecting advertising and communication today? Mobile, quicker time to sale, and the fusion of creative advertising by customer data, according to the boss of one of the world's biggest ad agencies. Speaking with Beet.TV in this interview ahead of her visit to the upcoming Cannes Lions festival, SMG CEO Laura Desmond says: "It's a mobile-first [...]

Publicis’ VivaKi unit recently reorganized to thread programmatic trading throughout its sibling departments in a bid to take data-based planning to new heights and new media, according to a stablemate exec. "We are thinking not just data-centric but data-centric as it involves your entire media investment," ZenithOptimedia activation standards, insights and technology EVP Julian Zilberbrand tells Beet.TV in this video interview. "That means taking [...]

The intersection of data and creativity stands to be one of the hottest topics of discussion at Cannes once again this year. And as a result, more ad-tech executives and data scientists are receiving accolades for their work than ever before. “It’s exciting to have clients and to have people in our own organizations who normally don’t get to have their [...]

Storyful, acquired by News Corp in 2013, has for several years been an authoritative tool for leading publishers to find and verifying consumer-generate and various forms of social content.  It has expanded its reach to the advertising world with an agreement with the the giant media agency Starcom MediaVest Group.  The alliance was announced last month. We spoke with Storyful head Rahul Chopra [...]

CHICAGO - As programmatic buying has matured, agencies are pulling it from separate departments and integrating programmatic buying more closely into core operations, says Lisa Weinstein, President, Global Digital, Data and Analytics at Starcom MediaVest Group, in this interview with Beet.TV. The evolution of programmatic buying inside agencies is similar to the growth of digital departments, which had previously been siloed, but [...]

Be prepared for wearables to take on a bigger role in the advertising business and with consumers. That's why agencies such as Mindshare are devoting significant resources to this emerging market, via partnerships with companies like Apple as well as through internal research. "We are looking at how consumers are receptive to messages on wearables, what type of data we [...]

Addressable advertising can yield huge new opportunities in TV with "impression-based selling," says Kristin Dolan, Chief Operating Officer of Cablevision Systems Corporation, in this interview with Beet.TV. The cable operator has been selling ads with this type of census-level data for the last 18 months, using the access it has to every single channel tune-in in real time across its footprint, she explains. "We [...]

CHICAGO -- The amount of money SMG advertisers are spending on so-called "addressable TV", which helps buyers target unique consumers via cable and satellite boxes, with Internet precision, is on course to double this year. "We sized the addressable market for 2014 at about $300 million," says Tracey Scheppach, EVP of Precision Video at Starcom MediaVest Group, in this interview with Beet.TV. "This year as [...]

Facebook is this summer giving advertisers better ad targeting data so they can find better-quality ad inventory, according to the social network's ad chief. "Adding people-based marketing, we're taking the level of quality that markets can count on… understanding that they can deliver to real people,"  Facebook ad tech head David Jakubowski tells Beet.TV in this video interview. "We're beginning the first phases [...]

One of the major themes of 2015 is viewability, says Erin Kienest, SVP, innovation and activation director at SMG. "We talk about making our dollars work harder and work smarter, and viewability really is brought to the forefront," she says. Marketers not only want their ads delivered to the right audience but also want to make sure those ads are actually being [...]

The next revolution in media is going to have to occur in the world of creative, says Shenan Reed, president of digital at MEC. "We think there's tremendous opportunity for more creative, more targeted creative," she says. "We can really get granular with all of the targeting." Digital and data, because they've become such powerful assets for understanding consumers, are now moving [...]

Big media companies don't usually buy vendors that want to rip up their historic main funding mechanism. But true[X] wants to reboot the way advertising is delivered by 21st Century Fox, which acquired it for $200 million in December. What is true[X]'s big idea? Rewarding viewers for interacting with good ads by showing them fewer ads overall, says co-founder  Joe Marchese, in this video interview [...]

When Brian O’Kelley was fired from Right Media after its sale to Yahoo because of a major disagreement about the direction the company had been being taken in, he considered whether he should retire or maybe become a venture capitalist. Instead, later in 2007, he decided to start something new. “It took me about six weeks to realize that my passion was [...]

Last fall, following its acquisition of Atlas from Microsoft, Facebook announced its reboot of Atlas as a cross-device ad targeting solution. Today, the social network is switching many of its advertisings over to that system. "We've signed deals with five of the six holding companies. We are actively onboarding clients with all of them," Facebook ad tech head David Jakubowski says in this video [...]

CHICAGO -- Embrace failure. It's often possible to learn more from mistakes and pitfalls than from victories. That's the advice of Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group in this deep-dive interview with Beet.TV about her strategy and approach to her career in the advertising business over the last few decades. "I've learned more from failure than success. When you are on top of the [...]

Today, Tim Armstrong is credited with having turned around one media company, as the resurrection and recent sale of AOL suggests. But, in 1993, when a 23-year-old Armstrong was embarking on his first foray in to the media business, things weren't quite so rosy. Fresh out of a six-month stint in investment banking, after realizing the finance world was not for him, Armstrong [...]

Last week's acquisition of SeriousEats and RoadFood by newcomer publishing house Fexy Media was just the start. Formed by husband-and-wide team Cliff and Lisa Sharples following Lisa's steering, as CEO, of AllRecipes to a $175 million acquisition by Meredith, Seattle-based Fexy plans more acquisitions of its own. "We continue to build out the category in and around the kitchen table," Cliff tells Beet.TV in this video interview. [...]

CHICAGO - The emergence of targeted, household-level TV advertising, will spawn a "renaissance" of creative ad making, says Tracey Scheppach, EVP of Precision Video at Starcom MediaVest Group, in this interview with Beet.TV She explains that creativity will be essential in delivering the right message to the targeted household.   But this renaissance is not happening quite yet.  It will follow the media [...]

Addressable TV, delivering advertisements to a specific household's cable or satellite box, is becoming a viable, albeit a nascent new medium with "hundreds of millions of dollars" being spent.  GroupM's advance television unit Modi Media has implemented 100 addressable campaigns so far this year, says Michael Bologna, President, in this interview with Beet.TV Addressable works for brands, he says, but the scope of [...]