While many in the media world think  that creativity in advertising has taken a back seat to the emergence of technology, Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB,  the industry organization for digital publishers, says that creativity is flourishing.  Several creative shops were recognized at the IAB MIXX Awards on Tuesday night. We spoke with him on Wednesday at the BrightRoll video [...]

Skateboarding dogs may not command as many viewers as Breaking Bad - but that doesn't mean Dailymotion is going to abandon user-generated content to pursue premium content rights. "If you look at the landscape, you have the program sites like the AOLs and Yahoos of the world and you have us and YouTube on the other side," Dailymotion north America GM [...]

For many in media, "programmatic" methods of advertising sales are geared to targeting and selling cheap inventory automatically, whilst conventional ad operations retain the task of selling main-line display ads. But there may be a third way. "At Heart, we've merged the functions - programmatic, sales and ad ops are now one," Hearst's revenue platforms and operations VP Michael Smith told Beet.TV's [...]

SAN FRANCISCO - Fora.tv, the pioneering Web video portal for authoritative conferences, has transformed its business strategy from a subscription and advertiser based model to a high end,  "white glove" services company for customers seeking end-to-end  live event and conference video services, says Blaise Zerega, CEO, in this interview with Beet.TV Zerega said that pay-per-view is of considerable interest to customers [...]

The AOL Programmatic Upfront event on Monday night was a "physical manifestation" of the media  industry's move to a data-driven, technology-focused means of operations, says Kristi Argyilan, CEO of Magna Global, the media agency of the Interpublic Group. We interviewed her at AOL event where she was a speaker in the program.  

One of the challenges for premium publishers in programmatic buying is navigating the complexity of the buy side of the ecosystem, says Mike Shehan, CEO and Founder of SpotXchange in this video segment with industry analyst Joanna O'Connell. "There are direct buys and direct sales, and traditional ad servers are excellent for servicing those. Then you have ad network buys and [...]

Magna Global is seeing upwards of 40% growth in programmatic video buying year over year, says Neeraj Kochar, Managing Director of Programmatic at Magna Global, during an interview with Forrester analyst Joanna O'Connell for Beet.TV. Much of the increase is coming from brand dollars, Kohcar tells Beet.TV. The media agency is betting big on automated media and expects programmatic and automated [...]

The programmatic ad-targeting techniques that are making waves in display advertising are commonly associated with low-value ad inventory. But The New York Times, a top-tier publisher which started selling some of its ads programmatically in May, doesn't see it that way. "We're set up a little differently from a lot of other publishers," the Times' programmatic director Matt Prohaska told Beet.TV's leadership [...]

Launched two years ago, Nielsen's Online Campaign Ratings has become a popular way to measure and price the effectiveness of ad campaigns, even if its reliance on gross rating points makes digital look a little like old TV. The OCR uses Facebook as its main method of tracking ad views. But now it is set to take on other data sources [...]

As the industry seeks a consistent, unified codec across devices and screens, Adobe Systems will support MPEG-DASH in early l2014, says Ashley Still, Director of Product Management in this interview with Beet.TV Still explains the utility of the new codec.  One question for the industry is whether Apple will support MPEG-DASH, she notes in the interview. She also sizes up the evolution [...]

AMSTERDAM -- Scottish commercial TV broadcaster STV has spent the last few years building up its STV Player multi-platform catch-up service. Now it will soon be able to commercialize live video in the same way it is on-demand. Earlier this month, the outfit inked a deal to use YoSpace to power ads in its live simulcast streams. "YoSpace allows us to take [...]

AMSTERDAM -- These days, it seems like hardware manufacturers are pushing out a new mobile or TV device every other day. For video content companies, that is a tremendous opportunity - but reaching the plethora of gadgets can also be a headache. "One of the key complexities is fragmentation of devices on the market," Accedo CEO Michael Lantz tells Beet.TV in [...]

Buying of online display ads through automated, "programmatic" techniques is booming, redefining that segment of the industry. So when will the same happen to video-format ads? "Programmatic video has not grown as quickly as our overall business in north America," says Brian Gleason, the north America MD of GroupM's data unit Xaxis admits to Beet.TV "Video in the digital arena continues to [...]

AMSTERDAM -- At the recent IBC trade show, industry tech stalwart Adobe introduced a range of new features to software such as Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Adobe Story and other products via the Creative Cloud model. That includes more than 150 new features across products, says Ellen Wixted, Senior Product Manager at Adobe Systems, in an interview with Beet.TV. The [...]

As the medium is maturing, spending on digital video is hitting double digits from some her media agency clients, says Amanda Richman president of Starcom, in this interview with Beet.TV.  In this video interview, she discusses the evolution of real-time marketing, branded entertainment and the growth of the digital video marketplace. We spoke at the OMMA conference where she was a [...]

Videology, the video advertising technology platform, which has been developed and deployed primarily for advertisers and marketers who are on the "buy" side of the programmatic marketplace, is expanding its publishers with a new product called Revenue Engine. Yesterday at the OMMA Video conference, we spoke with Todd Bender, VP of Product Supply at Videology after his panel presentation.  In this [...]

COLOGNE - With the advent of  global media platforms Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, the advertising industry has gone global -- and this transformation is having a profound impact on the  agency business.  He calls it a "huge issue." That is one of the takeaways of Michael Learmonth, Deputy Managing Editor of Advertising Age of the DMEXCO conference in this interview [...]

Nevermind TV -- is the opportunity for online video larger outside of the conventional mediascape? That's what video  services firm Kaltura's CEO thinks. "By 2016, every employee of large companies is going to consume 16 hours a month for work-related activities," Ron Yekutiel tells Beet.TV in this video interview. "As the workplace becomes consumerized -- people bring their own device -- Kaltura is [...]

AMSTERDAM -- Is this the end for "end-to-end"? It often seems like every online video technology vendor is flaunting its "end-to-end" credentials. But, whilst they have boasted of offering content clients every single video function under the sun, the big video services Brightcove has gone in the opposite direction. "The single biggest strategic pivot that we've made in the last 12 to [...]

In an unusual move by a leading publisher, AOL is making its premium, 'reserved" inventory available via its programmatic platform, the company announced last night at its "Programmatic Upfront" event in Manhattan. To get an update on the new product announcement, we spoke with Seth Demsey,  SVP at AOL Networks. More on the AOL initiative in this Wall Street Journal report.