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Xumo’s Marcien Jenckes: CTV Home Screen Is the Place Where ‘Engagement Moments’ Happen

In this ever-fragmented media landscape, advertisers are forced to visit numerous destinations to find audience segments, while integrated ecosystems provide unified access that functions like an “easy button for connected TV.” “Fragmentation makes buying audiences hard. You have to go to a bunch of different places to find a little piece of the audience that you’re looking for,” Marcien Jenckes, president of Charter Communications-Comcast streaming joint venture Xumo, told Beet.TV at the IAB NewFronts. “The reality is that an advertiser wants to connect with an audience no matter where they are. [...]

Posted on 04/01/2026 at4:18

IAB NewFronts 2026

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Chalice’s Ali Manning: Brands Should Use AI for Growth, not Just Efficiency

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Companies that focus artificial intelligence implementation with an eye toward business growth, rather than expense reduction, will outpace competitors. The view is that AI’s transformative power should drive real outcomes that matter to brands rather than operational efficiency alone. But getting brands to accept that remains a challenge. “Who’s going to leap ahead of their competition [...]

Commerce Media Needs Less Drama, More Co-Building: Digitas’ Christa Klausner

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – If there is one thing Christa Klausner would like the industry to stop doing, it is obsessing over “tension.” Yes, commerce media networks want control. Yes, agencies want flexibility. No, this is not a reality show. “Tension is kind of a strong word,” said Klausner, executive vice president of commerce media at Publicis Groupe's Digitas North [...]

Partnership with Allen Media will Make News Advertising Cool Again: Anoki AI’s Abbey Thomas

NEW YORK – At the IAB NewFronts 2026, Abbey Thomas of Anoki AI had a message that might make media buyers do a double take: thanks to a new partnership with Allen Media Group, advertising in news may no longer feel like a reputational gamble. Speaking with David Kaplan of Beet.TV, Thomas laid out how AI-powered contextual analysis is turning what [...]

For WBD’s Steinhauser, Agentic AI Still Early Stage But With Meaningful Momentem

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The ad industry talks a lot about removing friction. Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to do it by threading agentic AI into its advertising workflows and rebuilding its ad tech stack from the ground up around open, API-driven architecture. WBD has already moved parts of its ad workflow through agentic systems, freeing staff from low-value tasks [...]

Commerce Media Needs Transparency, Teamwork and Fewer Hidden Fees: Yahoo DSP’s Beth Gross

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – At the Beet Retreat San Juan, Beth Gross, head of commerce media at Yahoo DSP, described a business that is trying to serve two masters without upsetting either. On one side, Yahoo helps brands tap into commerce data and signals to improve campaigns. On the other, it helps retailers and commerce partners build their own media [...]

Organic First, ROAS Last: Havas Is Rethinking Retail Media From the Ground Up

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - With more than 350 retail media networks now vying for advertiser dollars, the channel has become so saturated that brands risk cannibalizing their own organic visibility by over-investing in paid placements. That's the cautionary message from one media agency executive, who argues the industry's obsession with return on ad spend is leading brands down a costly path. "Retail [...]

Assembly’s Jason Lim: Cross-Media Measurement Is Not a ‘Panacea’

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Cross-media measurement requires multiple tools rather than one mechanism that answers all questions, encompassing modeling, uplift analysis, testing, and experimentation applied to different use cases within a comprehensive framework. “Cross media measurement isn’t a singular device. It’s not a panacea where one measurement mechanism will answer all of the questions that you need answered,” Jason Lim, chief media [...]

Martech Needs Fewer Buttons and More Brains: Dentsu X’s Maggie Summers

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – At a time when marketing tech stacks resemble overstuffed carry-ons, Maggie Summers, head of activation at Dentsu X, has a simple suggestion: stop collecting tools and start making decisions. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Beet Retreat San Juan, Summers said many bloated systems are built for execution rather than insight. “Most tech stacks are [...]

CTV’s ROI Challenge: Why Premium Features May Be Undermining Returns

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The connected TV advertising market is booming, with spending projected to surpass traditional TV by 2028. But all those sophisticated targeting capabilities and premium ad formats that make CTV so appealing - could they actually be hurting advertisers' bottom lines? As marketers layer more bells and whistles onto their CTV campaigns - think audience targeting, content [...]

Hispanic Audiences Are Mainstream, Not Optional: TelevisaUnivision’s Richard Bertodatti

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The passion of viewers alone will not close a deal as marketers seek business outcomes from their media partners, according to Richard Bertodatti, svp of multimedia and advanced ad sales at TelevisaUnivision. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Beet Retreat San Juan, Bertodatti said the Hispanic audience may be deeply engaged with music, sports, [...]

Three Pillars for Retail Media Network Success in a Crowded Market

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - U.S. omnichannel retail media is projected to generate $71.67 billion in 2026, as retailers work to unify in-store and digital operations. But, with more than 240 networks now vying for advertiser dollars, retail media is getting as crowded as crowded as Walmart on Black Friday. The explosion of options has created a fragmented landscape. The path forward [...]

Wunderkind’s Adam Gendelman: Pause Ads Drive 79% Lower Cost Per Action Than Other CTV Formats

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Pause ads might just be the ultimate form of advertising kindness to both marketers and CTV viewers alike.. “The results we saw is our pause ad experience drove 79% lower cost per action versus other channels that are running on CTV, in streaming, any other interactive formats,” Adam Gendelman, vp, head of sales, supply and operations [...]

Trust Is the Real Currency in Commerce Media: Chase Media’s Lauren Griewski

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — In an industry obsessed with signals, identity graphs and whatever acronym dropped this morning, Lauren Griewski has a simpler thesis. “Trust is always going to be the most important currency when building relationships with consumers,” said the managing director of Chase Media Solutions during an interview with Beet.TV at the Beet Retreat San Juan. That may sound [...]

Infolinks Media’s Bob Regular: Real-Time Intent Signals Are ‘Precious’ Compared to ‘Stale’ Modeled Data

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Live engagement signals that capture actual audience presence and activity provide superior value compared to modeled data that becomes stale over weeks of appending and processing. “The beautiful thing about us working directly with our publishers is we’re able to identify real-time intent, we’re able to identify real-time engagement signals,” Bob Regular, CEO of Infolinks Media, [...]

OpenX’s Erika Loberg: Attention Should Measure ‘Real Human Engagement,’ Not Just Screen Presence

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Connected TV attention measurement must focus on actual viewing behavior rather than traditional viewability metrics designed for desktop environments, since ad appearance on living room screens doesn’t guarantee engagement. “Defining attention for CTV should be a real human engagement, someone actually watching the screen,” Erika Loberg, global head of CTV at OpenX, told Beet.TV contributor David [...]

Advertisers Chasing Chatbot Intimacy Confront Obstacles: U of Digital’s Tameka Kee

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Consumers are spilling their deepest secrets and most specific needs to artificial intelligence platforms. To some, that is creating a goldmine of raw commercial intent previously unseen in traditional search engines or social media networks. But tapping into this highly personal data carries significant risks of breaking trust if mismanaged, so the rush to capitalize on generative [...]

FreeWheel’s Alex Ibarguen: CTV Fragmentation Is ‘Very Much an Identity Problem’

Connected TV’s fragmentation challenges extend beyond inventory distribution to fundamental identity resolution issues that erode audience fidelity as buyers extend campaigns across multiple activation endpoints. “The fragmentation problem in CTV is real, but we as an industry often talk about it as an inventory problem, but it’s very much an identity problem as well,” Alex Ibarguen, director, platform sales, independent & [...]

Streaming Has Passed Linear – Now Roku Wants to Prove CTV Can Perform

For decades, television was the ultimate brand-awareness machine and little else. You bought the spot, hoped the right eyeballs landed on it, and moved on. No signal came back. Now, according to one Roku executive, that era is definitively over. More Americans now watch television via streaming than through traditional linear broadcast. "Performance on CTV today really means possibilities," said John [...]

‘Impression Gap’ Shows Why Attention Still Matters in CTV Advertising: VAB’s Sean Cunningham

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — In the streaming era, viewers have more choices than ever. Advertisers have more confusion too. Sean Cunningham, president, CEO of the Video Advertising Bureau, says the industry has spent years debating what “premium video” really means. His answer: stop arguing and start measuring where people are actually looking. “We wanted to get scientific about the question of [...]

Alliant’s Margo Hock: First-Party Data Has Its Limits

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Brands relying exclusively on first-party data miss cross-brand consumer behavior patterns, creating blind spots that limit audience understanding beyond single-retailer interactions. “Yes, that first party data is that liquid gold for a brand. A brand gets that from you because you want to then have your Kroger’s card or your Sephora points,” Margo Hock, vp for [...]