BERLIN -- Outside of some key markets, few may have heard of Viewster. But the Zurich- and Berlin-based VOD service has more than 20 million unique monthly users across four of its operating countries. At this week's Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival) and European Film Market, Viewster chief content officer Robert Franke appeared on on a panel and was searching for new content [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- What works in online video advertising, and where is it going to work best? Emotional content, and on Facebook, according to one company which measures the virality of digital video spots. "This year, we think Facebook is going to be the big winner - Facebook is going to just explode in terms of video consumption," says Richard Kosinski, president [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Fresh from RTL buying a majority stake for $144m, programmatic video ad tech outfit SpotXchange says it will shortly be opening up more offices in Europe under the group's stewardship. "You’ll see some news from us early this year around new office openings specifically in the European region," SpotXchange platform SVP Sean Buckley tells Beet.TV. "(RTL) gets us closer to [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Google's YouTube announced last month it would switch from Flash to powering its video player in HTML5 by default. But the video site wasn't the only property to have gone in that direction. The New York Times went to HTML5-first a few years ago now, out of a "toolbox" that has been used by editorial, Interactive Stories and [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- How times change. Once, the web was the be-all and end-all of digital media. Wired magazine's playful cover story may not quite have come to pass, but the web certainly isn't where digital starts and ends nowadays. "Eighty-seven percent of mobile traffic happens in an app," says ad tech company Jun Group's CEO Mitchell Reichgut. "The web is [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- To spread their messages across so many different kinds of marketing channel these days, advertisers are going to have to create spots for more formats than just standard, 30-second TV ads. Fortunately, that is now beginning to happen, says Innovid CTO and co-founder Tal Chalozin. "In order to really apply sophistication on the creative side… you need multiple [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- The emergence of so-called "programmatic" ad-trading techniques, in which new software platforms enable precise, data-driven ad buying and selling, has kicked off a race of ad tech suite vendors. Each promises to serve customers with a specific part of the value chain - but one vendor says this just confuses customers. "There is a massive amount of programmatic point [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Viewers love TV, but they love watching TV on multiple device screens even more, says a video ad tech vendor targeting benefits form the consumer shift. "Consumers see TV as TV - an episode of Family Guy is an episode of Family Guy, regardless of where you watch it," says video ad tech platform FreeWheel's business solutions GM James [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Many in the video ad tech space think the old way of buying and selling TV ads will soon be overturned by new technology. But TV planning and buying tool Mediaocean's product VP Cordie DePascale says the old guard must be eased in to the new world for mutual benefit to occur. "There’s a rich history inside of traditional," [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Companies in the TV advertising business don't need to adopt all of the so-called "programmatic" technologies vendors tout to benefit from some of their key efficiencies, says one such vendor in the chain. "You don’t have to have complete automation, dynamic ad insertion," Adap,tv programmatic SVP Dan Ackerman tells Beet.TV in this panel interview. Adap.tv is a unit o [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE - The ideal partnership for media divisions and creative departments is to work together from the start of a campaign, says Shenan Reed, President of Digital North America at MEC, at the recent Beet.TV executive retreat in an interview with Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp. "Our job is to take creative and put it in the market. When [...]

LAS VEGAS -- Is digital video over? The leg work of getting content to consumers has at least been done thanks to the explosion of mobile screens - but operators will be left looking elsewhere in the search for digital dollars, says an analyst. "It’s almost like the first post-video CES - it’s all been done now," TV Strategies principal analyst and [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Content marketing discovery platform Taboola has completed its latest fundraising above the $100mn rumored in recent reports, with its founder saying some advertisers are spending eight-figure sums through the company. Taboola is announcing a $117mn Series E round, led by Fidelity Management and Research Company along with previous backers Marker LLC and Steadfast Capital. But notable new investors [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- The advertising focus for 2015 will squarely be on ROI, thanks to the proliferation of programmatic buying, says Chris Monteferrante, VP National Sales at AT&T AdWorks, AT&T's advanced advertising arm, in an interview with Beet.TV. AT&T AdWorks has rolled out a number of programmatic type products, including its TV Blueprint platform that enables more refined TV targeting, and has [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- The industry talks a good game about using data from addressable TV sets to target TV ads at household level. But Tracey Scheppach has been knocking at that door for the last 13 years. Scheppach, EVP, who leads innovation at Starcom MediaVest Group and who leads VivaKi's The Pool initiative, says TV operators hold the key - and they're [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- TV buying is heading on a path to addressability, and more focus on data is driving that, says Mike Bologna, President of MODI Media, in an interview with Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp., for Beet.TV. "We have the greatest momentum in addressable TV. There are 42 million US homes, that's one-third of homes that have the ability [...]

LAS VEGAS -- Appliance maker Whirlpool recently launched its Every Day Cares campaign, built out of consumer insights, says Bill Beck, Senior Director Mass Brands & Channel Marketing, at Whirlpool in an interview with Beet.TV from the CES show. The campaign consists of TV, social, and digital, with online video as one of the centerpieces. The newest campaign grew out of the [...]

LAS VEGAS – Television is at another tipping point, says Jeffrey Cole, founder and director of the Center for the Digital Future, a research and policy institute in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Citing HBO's plans to launch an over-the-top service, Cole predicts television will soon change profoundly – and that content is going to control everything. "I grew up [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Over the last couple of years, the digital advertising industry has woken up to the problem of fake ad views, in which ads served by a publisher are not really seen by genuine consumers. If you thought "premium" publishers are off the hook, think again... "When we look at the top  top 100 publisher sites or video properties, [...]

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Mobile is one of the key areas of focus for video ad tech firm BrightRoll in 2015, and the company reckons its recent acquisition by Yahoo, for $640mn, will help it execute. "It’s been underpenetrated and underserved by the video market over the last couple of years," Brightroll marketplace SVP and GM Dan Mosher tells Beet.TV in this video [...]