LONDON -- The upcoming Cannes Lions festival's debut track for creativity in the booming segment of advertising technology has attracted 845 award entries in its first year. Ahead of the iconic festival starting June 21, a record total 40,133 award entries have been submitted. Lions Innovation, which will see data, technology and creativity intersect, has received 226 entries into the Innovation category and 619 entries into [...]

Women's lifestyle digital content company PureWow is aiming to expand deeply into video, as well bolster its work in mobile this year, says Ryan Harwood, CEO of PureWow, in this interview with Beet.TV. Thanks to a recent venture round, PureWow is investing in its mobile infrastructure as well as video content and data science. With more than 60% of traffic [...]

If data is really the new oil, are media operators letting enough of the stuff run to advertisers who are craving it? A new Forrester report, "Solving Digital Video Advertising’s Premium Dilemma", commissioned by outstream video ad vendor Teads from Forrester, spotlights a disconnect between the two camps. "Media companies talk about the user experience," Forrester principal analyst Jim Nail, who authored the report, tells [...]

If you remember the mid-90s futuristic hype about "interactive TV", you will know the concept goes back a long way. Maria Mandel Dunsche remembers. The VP of AT&T's AdWorks division has been working with such platforms since 1999, helping brands try to exploit the emerging channel. But it's only lately the reality has come to pass. "I've been in this space for 15+ years," Dunsche tells Beet.TV [...]

The recent decision of Publicis' VivaKi to spread its Audience On Demand across the unit shows how "programmatic" methods of automating the trading of ads are becoming more embedded across ad agencies, says Rubicon Project marketplace development SVP Jay Sears. "A lot of the headlines have gotten it incorrect,' he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. "The headlines are 'AOD is dead'. The fact [...]

LONDON -- When new screens arrive on the scene, many marketers instinctively get excited about new opportunities to deliver messages to consumers. But, whilst the new smartwatch category may whet appetites with the prospect of advertising to audiences' wrists, the reality will have to be more sensitive, more nuanced, and may be more about input than output. "Nobody's really cracked what the Internet Of [...]

Just because analog media are disconnected, that doesn't mean they can't benefit from digital efficiencies. Case in point - programmatic, automated sales of display advertising are now gobbling up a large portion of the digital industry. Now ad tech house MediaMath is working to bring programmatic even to offline media. MediaMath's OPEN global media partnerships VP Sam Cox calls it "media enablement". "You've [...]

More than most people, Keith Reinhard knows that persistence pays off. In an interview with Beet.TV, DDB Worldwide’s chairman emeritus describes the shock of being fired by McDonald’s and his 16-year campaign to win them back. Reinhard recalls receiving notice from McDonald’s in 1981, when he was president of Needham, Harper & Steers, as the greatest setback of his career. But he [...]

Watch the consumer. Always keep an eye on how she is changing. That's the advice on how to thrive and survive in the media business from a veteran and a luminary who has shepherded TV networks, designer goods e-commerce sites and now a venture fund. "I am always struck by how much has changed, not just in my lifetime but in the last [...]

Visible World, a pioneering video adtech firm that helps marketers deliver ads to specific household cable and satellite boxes, will be acquired by Comcast, according a report published by the Wall Street Journal. Last year, we spoke with founder and CEO Seth Haberman about the company and the prospects for "addressable" television.   We have republished that video tonight.

LONDON -- Back in January, media agency SMG announced NextTECHnow, a program to get closer to UK tech startups that can help bring innovations to brand campaigns. Since then, the programme has been kept somewhat under the radar. But the man who runs it now opens up on the rationale and its early progress. "In the past, we thought we could create everything [...]

LONDON -- Ad tech platforms need to do a better job of telling ad buyers exactly what kind of video placements they are bidding for, says an exec from one such company. "Standards like the RTB spec and the exchanges need to wake up start adding more metadata to these requests to enrich that buy for the brand," according to Coull product VP Nick Forsberg. His [...]

When Martin Sorrell bought in to WPP in 1985, it was the start of a journey that would end up making the world's largest advertising holding group. What most people probably don't know, however, is that, along the way, Sorrell nearly made a very costly mistake. Asked by Beet.TV in this video interview to regale his biggest career setback, Sorrell says: "It was the near-death experience... in [...]

LONDON -- Thanks to the rise of advertising technology, the "Mad Men" of ad agencies have been joined by the so-called "Maths Men" of tech vendors. But these two camps need not be perceived as coming from different disciplines, says one agency boss. Pippa Glucklish, UK co-CEO of SMG, tells Beet.TV the "tension between data and creativity" should be de-fused. "People should [...]

Interpublic Group CEO Michael I. Roth took an unusual path to the top of the ad industry. He was a tax attorney and then an insurance executive and was running Mutual of New York before he came to IPG in 2005. While he finds there’s some similarity between being a tax attorney and an ad holding company CEO -- like the [...]

Becoming sort of holding company within its parent WPP, Xaxis is launching new, stand alone businesses.  The latest is called Light Reaction, a company that measures the impact of mobile advertising, says Brian Lesser, Global CEO of Xaxis in this interview with Beet.TV The new unit is an amalgam of two acquisitions of ActionX and QuismaX along with existing Xaxis technology. [...]

Consumer habits have become the biggest driver of change in the media business and in enterprise too, says Kay Koplovitz, Chairman and co-founder of Springboard Enterprises in an interview with Beet.TV. The prevalence of mobile and digital devices and their growth worldwide is leading media and corporations to shift how they run their businesses. "Consumer habits have taken over and they are in control now. [...]

LONDON -- Like most technologies, so-called "programmatic" sales of online video ad inventory first took hold in the US. Now it is gathering pace across the pond. "We’ve seen ... 40% more demand in the UK from Q1 to Q4," according to video ad tech outfit TubeMogul's UK MD Nick Reid. "We’ve also seen a 20% increase in CPM prices. Different regions are at different stages [...]

LONDON -- Back when SMG’s Pippa Glucklich was a university student writing her dissertation about women in advertising, just 14% of senior executives in the ad industry in the UK were women. Now, two decades later, the percentage has increased, but only to 25%. “Our industry in the UK is absolutely split 50/50 at entry level, and by the time you [...]

Colorado video adtech company Altitude Digital, has raised $30 million in financing, enabling it to expand its supply-side platform offering (SSP) to publishers globally, explains Jeremy Ostermiller, CEO, in this interview with Beet.TV The financing was announced in April. More on the growth in the Denver-based company in this report in the Denver Post. We spoke with him last month at the LUMA [...]