The online video business is still suffering from a lack of premium supply, says Charles Gabriel, VP Video Sales at AOL. But that's one of the reasons AOL Video continued to grow its platform and ad offerings this past year, he says in this interview with Ashley J. Swartz at the recent Beet.TV executive retreat. As video grows, issues of viewability and [...]

BARCELONA -- How often is too often for developers to update their mobile apps? "We know companies doing updates at least on a weekly basis just to keep you live," says Bruce Beckloff, corporate development head at Marmalade, a London agency whose technology helps developers deploy across multiple platform standards. "Everybody sees a little bit of an uptick in their downloads [...]

BARCELONA -- Some may say the ad business is like a soap opera these days - but InMobi thinks it should come in "episodes". "We came up with an episodic learning platform which uses a methodology to work with consumers campaign-to-campaign," says mobile ad network InMobi's head of products, brand and commerce Preetham Venkatesh. "If you treat your campaign an episode, you [...]

Video ad tech company Videology expects the growth of programmatic solutions for buying and selling television inventory and has become "fully integrated" with Nielsen TV data to empower ad buyers, the company announce today. Earlier this year, we spoke with Videology CEO Scott Ferber about the eventual automation of linear TV ad buying via a programmatic solution. We have republished that [...]

Today, Adap.tv, the video advertising technology unit of AOL, announced the introduction of a product to power the programmatic buying of linear television ads. The company is debuting the technology with a deep integration with IPG's Magna Global unit. Here is a statement from Magna Global President Kristi Argyilan on the new product integration: “The power of programmatic lies in its ability [...]

BARCELONA -- The developer behind some of the biggest mobile social games is offering to help others monetize their apps. "We are taking on third-publishing - that will change our model," says James Peng, head of user acquisition and monetization at Redwood City, California Dragon Story and Bubble Mania developer Storm8. "We're helping to launch games that are inherently successful - they have [...]

Vidible, a San Francisco-based start-up, which has created a content exchange platform for video creators and publishers, has received a $3.5 investment in a Series  A round lead by Greycroft Partners with IDG and The New York Times. The role of Greycroft and IDG in the round  was previous reported in TechCrunch.   The participation of the Times along with an [...]

As more brand are considering implementing their own programmatic platforms, media agencies need to more clearly present their value, advises Dee Salomon, Chief Marketing Officer of MediaLink, the influential media consulting firm.   In this segment from the recent Beet executive retreat, she says that MediaLink is working with brands in evaluating programmatic solutions. She is interviewed on stage by Ashley [...]

Whether or not the recently announced $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable by Comcast receives government approval, the impact of cable consolidation coupled with an emerging multi-tiered Internet represents a threat to the competitiveness and to the  Internet itself, says Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Minds, in this  commentary for Beet.TV  

BARCELONA -- Audio-identifying mobile app Shazam is trying to create a business selling data to advertisers by encouraging users to tag content other than music. "We're now able to target advertising based on Shazam activity," CEO Rich Riley tells Beet.TV. "We can do that on Shazam and off Shazam. We can follow a device ID on to Facebook and continue targeting." This recently [...]

BARCELONA -- Freemium has become the super-dominant app store monetization method, with some 94% of App Store revenue coming from free downloads supporting in-app purchases, according to Distimo's 2013 Year-End Review. But that doesn't mean app developers can guarantee success just be deploying in-app goods, says former Guardian News & Media strategy head James Cooper. "It doesn't matter what your uptake of [...]

BARCELONA -- If you want to understand apps, you need to understand app users. That's according to one mobile advertising technologist. "The core of the search era was the keyword, the core of the social era is the stuff you share on social networks," says InMobi's product director Abhishek Bapna. "In the app ecosystem, neither of them are really useful to understand user engagement [...]

BARCELONA - AOL is making a big international push around its marquee content brands.  The Huffington Post will  be published in 14 countries by year end, says Graham Moysey, Head of International for AOL, in this interview with Beet.TV The Huffington Post just launched in Korea, its 11th international edition. He says that half of the company's traffic comes from outside the [...]

BARCELONA -- AOL will soon launch a native advertising unit aimed specifically at mobile publishers, AOL Networks global media director Chad Gallagher told Beet.TV at Mobile World Congress. "We're going to have a major announcement here in a few weeks about our native solution which we think will be really interesting," Gallagher said. "If you look at Facebook......they rolled out not a square [...]

BARCELONA -- Mobile advertising has come a long way - but it could go a lot further if it truly used mobility as a core planning component. That's one one mobile exec thinks. "Advertisers don't have access to cookies. They do have access to location data," says Tyler Bell, product VP at Factual. "We have a location data set of all the world's [...]

BARCELONA, Spain -- Will the mobile web kill off apps? That is an oft-asked question. Right now, however, the route for advertisers to take is clear, says ad group Mindshare's chief digital officer Norm Johnston. We've moved past the mobile vortex and confusion," he tells Beet.TV. "But there are still some fundamental issues. "Do brands go down an app route or stick [...]

What a fantastic, productive Q1 starting with CES, then our incredible Beet Retreat in Vieques, the IAB Annual Meeting in Palm Springs, and this week in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress. Next month we are in LA for the 4A's annual meeting  then up to San Francisco on March 25 for our summit on the automation of television advertising buying [...]

PALM SPRINGS, CA — Online video and mobile video are among the fastest growing categories at multi-screen video ad tech firm Collective Media, with mobile video 50% of the mobile business, says Travis Lusk, VP Inventory at Collective in an interview with Beet.TV. This is an evolution from Collective's genesis in display ads as the company is now focused across platforms and [...]

BARCELONA - If brands can harness the available data about mobile users, their habits and their interaction with apps, they can evolve their apps to drive more business and success, says Peggy Anne Salz, mobile industry analyst at MobileGroove and author of Apponomics, a book on the business of apps. "If you understand their behavior within the app, you can then [...]

BARCELONA -- WhatsApp's mega acquisition by Facebook should be welcomed as another pointer that mobile messaging could be a money-spinner, according to one mobile ad exec. (Mobile) will go either toward commerce or toward advertising," InMobi north America MD Crid Yu tells Beet.TV. "It's amazing to me that, after all these years, the most commonly seen form of mobile advertising is [...]