Steve Ellwanger

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—As traditional television networks weigh the benefits of completely upending their business models, they also find themselves as middlemen of sorts between advertisers and agencies. This is the view of Ethan Heftman, VP, Precision/Performance, A+E Networks, who notes “a bit of a bifurcation, a division between what brands want and what the […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Consultant Matt Prohaska senses less of a stigma surrounding programmatic television and more “cross pollination” of agency teams. But he sees things like frequency capping and reducing transactional friction costs as very much a work in progress. “Fortunately, thank god the stigma of programmatic TV and those two words being bridged together […]

Walking the floors of last year’s CES extravaganza, EY’s Janet Balis saw many separate consumer-facing ecosystems with smart technology in common. “And you see a lot of friction between the electronics in your kitchen suddenly communicating with your front door or communicating with the screens and devices and mobile experiences that we each have,” says […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—With more long-tail video migrating to television distribution, vetting that content is a demanding process, according to Neil Smith of FreeWheel Markets. A bit easier but also required is being able to map the personnel structure of major agency holding companies to figure out whom the company needs to work with. While […]

Even as more marketers come to understand the value proposition of advanced advertising targeting, more sell-side silos are being erected. This is why a big focus under new GroupM North America CEO Tim Castree is to encourage the disaggregation of data, inventory and technology. While a lot of progress has been made in the last […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—With collaboration “really the key word,” 4C Insights continues to add to its ensemble of inventory aggregation partners for unified, cross-platform targeting and measurement given advertisers’ desire for more scale. “The theme for us continues to be to provide audience-driven solutions for marketers, where they can buy on an audience-basis inventory across […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—So-called direct-to-consumer brands have disrupted many product and service categories, from creation to distribution. But when they need more scale they’re turning to television, a trend that prompted NBCUniversal to partner with the agency Giant Spoon. Last month, the two companies launched Direct to Scale, whose core offerings are media strategy and […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—There’s lots of predictions about where television and premium video are headed. Then again, “There’s a lot of things that are actually already happening, probably more in some ways than a wider industry lens might understand,” says VideoAmp’s Jay Prasad. This is why Prasad reflects on this year’s Retreat in this interview […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—An early entrant in digital marketing, independent buy-side platform Sizmek has been eyeing its near-term future from a “video extension perspective” as its reach moves beyond web video to television. It was a logical move considering the big shift in video viewing to big screens, according to Managing Director of Product Hardeep […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Building audience targeting segments for attributes like advocacy and loyalty is best done with sub-segments at the various steps of the purchase funnel, according to NCC’s Danielle Seth. In this interview with Beet.TV, the VP of Client Partnerships explains how NCC leverages its MVPD unique subscriber identifiers matched to set-top box data […]

Smart-TV manufacturer Vizio is teaming up with nine major media and technology companies to create an addressable advertising standard. Called Project OAR (Open Addressable Ready), the participants will define technical standards for targeting specific households and Vizio will build the technology. Along with Vizio and its data unit Inscape, the consortium’s members are AMC Networks, […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—iSpot.tv has been a third-party television data provider for the past five years. So when Robert Bareuther hears someone at Beet Retreat 2018 talk about third-party verification and measurement as being “royalty right now,” he takes a bow of sorts. “It’s like de facto. And that’s pretty cool. Maybe iSpot should get […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—When it comes to matching consumer datasets, Comscore should be considered more of a chef than someone who actually produces food. “We offer these audiences tied to the viewing behavior of television and to digital audiences as well. What you have to understand is that we don’t have a hand in creating […]

For most of the three decades that David Levy has been with Turner, it’s been advertising first, distribution second and consumer experience third. “We’ve now flipped that over the last couple of years and consumer experience is number one, distribution second and advertising third,” Levy says. As he looks ahead to CES 2019, he talks […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—For local television, the 2018 election cycle was tantamount to an early Christmas present. And although 2020 promises to be even better sales-wise, TV providers have to speed up their efforts to roll out targeted, impression-based advertising without cannibalizing their “core bread and butter traditional linear inventory,” says Furious Corp. CEO Ashley […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—To TiVo’s Lisa Lutz, it’s not that people aren’t asking the right questions about creating audience segments and targeting them across platforms and devices. “It’s just that there’s so many questions and so many problems to be solved, we’re just not there yet,” says the VP of Product Management. “I think it’s […]

LONDON – Which should be more important to television advertisers: viewer attention or ad “performance”? The answer poses risks for TV providers given the increasing march toward all things performance, according to Fox Networks Group’s Joe Marchese. “I feel that more and more TV is getting baited into trying to become a performance outlet,” the […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—All the first-party television viewing data in the world won’t parse out co-viewing by individual human beings. In the meantime, Hulu is working with third-party providers like Comscore and Nielsen “to get at who are the people who are most likely to be sitting in the room,” says the OTT pioneer’s Head […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Anyone can sympathize with traditional television networks given the transformational challenges they face. But to empathize, one has to have been there, as has Adam Gerber. In this interview, the ABC and agency veteran details the responsibilities for change of each constituency—from media to measurement companies, marketers and agencies—as he assays the […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—For marketers, addressable television advertising should not be an either-or proposition, according to DISH Media’s Kevin Arrix. It’s all about deciding its appropriate role within the mix of advanced-TV options. In this interview at Beet Retreat 2018, Arrix talks about the partnership between Sling TV and audience measurement provider Comscore and the […]