LONDON -- It may be forbidden from running even traditional display ads at home in the UK, but elsewhere in the world, the BBC's commercial wing is embarking on blending marketing and editorial material, having recently embarked on sponsored content production effort. "There's no reason why a brand … shouldn't have a voice; anyone can tell a story," BBC Worldwide's global [...]

LONDON -- Media people are talking a lot about "barbells" - Tim Armstrong's metaphor for an advertising world that is coalescing around the seemingly polar forms of sponsored content on the one hand and data-driven display sales on the other. But one ad exec reckons those opposite ends aren't as distinct as the metaphor suggests. "Media are polarising around two extremes - [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- AOL-owned Adap.tv is working closely with media agency giant Magna Global to deepen the work both are doing in programmatic video buying, says Kara Weber, Chief Marketing Officer at Adap.tv in this video interview with Beet.TV. The partnership was inked last fall and now Magna Global has begun running digital and TV ads through the Adap.tv programmatic buying [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Eager to capture some of a fast-growing pie, agency software provider Mediaocean has been expanding its offerings to accommodate more programmatic buying. The next two years represent a huge opportunity to make programmatic a bigger component of an overall media budget, says Fraser Woollard, VP Business Development at Mediaocean during an interview with Beet.TV. "We want to be [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the key growth factors in programmatic buying lies in the integration of tech partners, says Dan Ackerman, Senior VP Programmatic at Adap.TV during an interview with Beet.TV. "We want to be the agency platform that enables all these processes," he says. Data providers like Nielsen, Rentrak and Kantar are important partners in delivering the data to enable [...]

LONDON -- BuzzFeed's commercial stock in trade is offering sponsored editorial articles to brand marketers. Now it is extending the offering to digital videos. "We've done roughly 1,300 videos, 20% of them have over a million views." says the publisher's agency strategy VP Jonathan Perelman, who also recently took on its video GM role. BuzzFeed opened a video production studio in LA [...]

LONDON -- Nearly two years after launching, HuffPost Live, Huffington Post's effort to reinvent rolling TV news, is on the verge of breaking even, says HuffPost's CEO. "We've gotten to more than 100 million video views on a monthly basis now," Jimmy Maymann tells Beet.TV. "We need scale to appeal to TV buyers - we're getting there but we're not there [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -  AOL announced today the creation of ONE, a platform for both buyers and sellers of digital media to transact.  We sat down with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong after he presented the news as a keynote at the AdTech conference here. He speaks about the "mechanization" of the advertising and media business and the new role of AOL.   [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Netflix is betting more on the use of programmatic buying to help grow its user base and better connect viewers with the shows it offers, says Kathy O’Dowd, Senior Manager of Programmatic Marketing at Netflix during an interview with Beet.TV. She says that as Netflix expands its own marketing with programmatic buying, it focuses on premium publisher sites only. "We don't [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Despite the love-hate relationship some marketers have with GRPs, look for that standard measurement to play a part in digital and programmatic buying. Metrics like GRPs as well as ad buying strategies like automation can help bring more brands to digital that are more familiar with TV, says Paul Dolan, SVP Global Business Development at WPP-owned Xaxis, during an [...]

LONDON -- The New York Times must halt its digital advertising decline as a priority, says CEO Mark Thompson in this interview with Beet.TV Advertising, which historically has only ever grown since digital media are themselves growing platforms, fell again by a small amount during the publisher's last quarter. "We are absolutely determined to get digital advertising back to growth," Thompson tells [...]

Tubemogul, the programmatic video advertising technology platform, has filed for an IPO aimed at raising $75 million, according to government filings.  In January at CES we spoke with founder and CEO Brett Wilson about the company and its leadership role in pushing for viewability around digital video.  We have reposted that interview today.  

SAN FRANCISCO - Today, AOL announced the  organization of its programmatic advertising operations into a new entity which it calls "ONE."   Joining the initiative as "charter" partner is Magna Global, the media agency of IPG Mediabrands. Speaking with Beet.TV, Kristi Argyilan, president of Magna NA, gives an overview of the automation of digital media, the alliance with Adap.tv and AOL [...]

SAN FRANCISCO - Magna Global, the media agency of IPG Mediabrands, is creating new platforms to buy television inventory programmatically, with the creations of private marketplaces, explains Michael Brunick, SVP for Programmatic, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with him at the Beet.TV summit on programmatic television advertising yesterday.

SAN FRANCISCO -  Netflix is embracing programmatic video as a means to raise visibility of Netflix as an entertainment brand -  not as a service which had been the past marketing objective, explains Mike Zeman, Director of North American Marketing, in this interview with Beet.TV Zeman, who joined Netflix last year from the giant media  agency VivaKi, talks about the implementation [...]

In a sign of the growing importance of online video advertising technology, two of the sector's vendors are merging - and say they plan to go public next year. Ebuzzing, which was co-founded by French web entrepreneur Pierre Chapaz, and Teads, a French ad tech firm bringing new formats to market, say they are combining to form a group with over 300 [...]

LOS ANGELES -- The agency of the future will need to be structured to serve both programmatic advertising and big tentpole events too, says Phil Cowdell, President of Client Services at Group M, during an interview with Beet.TV at the 4A's conference in Los Angeles. "What I believe will happen is this curve that shows average distribution of ad units [...]

LOS ANGELES -- Technology will make cable and TV networks less necessary and branded content more necessary,  says Richard Guest, President of US Operations at Tribal Worldwide, during an interview with Beet.TV at the 4A's conference in Los Angeles. "We are seeing the indomitable march of technology where content will be distributed directly to consumers and a disintermediation of cable and TV [...]

LOS ANGELES -- The old adage of "50% of my ad budget works, I just don't know which 50%," may no longer hold true, says Chris Weil, Chief Executive Officer for Momentum Worldwide and the chairman of the 4A's during an interview with Beet.TV at the 4A's conference in Los Angeles. That's because of the proliferation of data, which is changing how [...]

LOS ANGELES -- Agencies have to find new ways of connecting brands to consumers, now that viewers are paying for video that doesn't have ad support, says one exec. "People are paying for that content. Advertisers have, all along, been supplementing the cost of that for the consumer," agency MEC's North America CEO Marla Kaplowitz tells Beet.TV. "There are more and more ways [...]