Steve Ellwanger

COLOGNE – Turner’s Donna Speciale knows the value of consumer data for advertising targeting and has been working with AT&T as it prepares to unveil its future at The Relevance Conference later this month. “I’m thrilled to be attending the conference in the next week or two,” she says. “I want to hear Brian’s vision […]

COLOGNE – At Salesforce, the acquisitions keep on coming, most recently that of AI-powered marketing intelligence and analytics platform Datorama. The company’s ongoing mantra is “integration” and it seems to have no shortage of assets to leverage in that quest. It all stems from what Chris O’Hara, VP, Product Marketing, calls the “fourth industrial revolution” […]

COLOGNE – In the midst of “one of the biggest stories of our lives, from a news perspective,” many viewers who don’t access CNN in the traditional way are watching CNNgo via connected televisions, with dwell and session times of “more than an hour and a half,” says Chris Berend, SVP, Global Video. “The audiences are coming to […]

While there are tactical ways to make advertising more relevant, Terry Kawaja believes there’s a bigger concept at play: relegating interruptive advertising to the past. The Founder & CEO of LUMA Partners will be one of some 250 industry leaders attending The Relevance Conference hosted by AT&T in Santa Barbara on Sept. 24-26. On the […]

COLOGNE – To Michael Kassan, there could not be a better time for The Relevance Conference that AT&T will host later this month. “I think the name speaks for itself. We are at a point in time where we all are kind of drowning in information,” he says. Not only will AT&T unveil the name […]

COLOGNE – Now that AppNexus is part of the AT&T advertising, content and communications universe, AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley says that making advertising matter is the overarching mantra. Central to that theme is relevance to consumers, and the world will learn exactly what that means when AT&T convenes its Relevance conference in California later this […]

COLOGNE – There are cultural and regulatory differences, but the television industry in Europe and the United States realizes it needs more unity to meet advertisers’ expectations. And the buy-side is ready to go, even though more tools are needed to fully realize advanced TV, according to FreeWheel’s Dave Clark. From his position as GM, […]

COLOGNE – As it extends beyond its roots of helping retailers with consumer ad retargeting, Criteo is building a new tech stack around platforms to help online retailers monetize their inventory. “They know we are sitting on a pile of data and data is gold, and they want to know how to use it,” says […]

COLOGNE – With its global programming footprint projected to reach more than 80 territories by year’s end, VICE Media today announced VICE Video Everywhere to make buying its advertising easier across mobile, digital and linear platforms. “The market is crying for more video. There is a huge shortage on that market,” says Dominique Delport, who […]

COLOGNE – The world’s largest independent buy-side advertising platform, Sizmek, says it will roll out an advanced-television solution that fully integrates linear, addressable and connected-TV advertising inventory. It will be powered by artificial-intelligence insights derived from digital advertising to TV for optimal targeting, reach and frequency across full campaigns. In this interview today at the […]

With television advertising targeting slowly catching up to that of digital media, “We think the revolution is just starting,” says Sandro Catanzaro, dataxu’s Chief Innovation Officer & Co-Founder. What started with “very humble web ads” about a decade ago has progressed to the point where “where we can show ads on TV that are fully […]

SAN FRANCISCO – The complexity of transacting local radio and television has long been a challenge. Now that it’s further complicated by data and digital technology advances, a one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t cut it, according to Tim Swift, VP of Platform Services at WideOrbit. So although WideOrbit provides the “system of record” for much of […]

An integration between dataxu and Sorensen Media is designed to reduce the time needed to activate and measure addressable television campaigns so that addressable starts to mimic the speed at which over-the-top TV has taken root. “This is going to be an explosion, a dramatic change in the market,” says Sandro Catanzaro, dataxu’s Chief Innovation […]

In the most significant manifestation of its desire to offer one-stop advertising, Walt Disney Co. is consolidating ESPN and Disney/ABC properties under Rita Ferro while announcing that longtime ESPN sales chief Ed Erhardt will retire in early 2019. In addition to ESPN and Disney/ABC, Ferro’s domain as President of Disney Advertising Sales will include Disney’s […]

SAN FRANCISCO – When WideOrbit was founded 18 years ago, the television universe was a whole lot simpler yet it was still too complicated at the local level. “There needed to be a solid foundation and system of record across the industry” that WideOrbit set out to create, says the company’s EVP of Engineering, Will […]

SAN FRANCISCO – As national television networks are coming together to standardize audience targeting, local broadcasters know they need to make the buying and selling of their inventory easier to execute. For Hearst Television and several others, one vehicle is the TIP Initiative hosted by the trade group TVB. “Local TV still has the majority […]

SAN FRANCISCO – As are their national counterparts, local television broadcasters are trying to come to grips with the pace of digital-linear convergence. But if they collaborate with one another, the technological tide is flowing in their direction. So says Bruce Roberts, President of WideOrbit, in this interview with Beet.TV at the platform provider’s WideOrbit […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Lighthouses will soon be popping up all over the United States, but they won’t have anything to do with nautical navigation. The new facilities will bring to life ATSC 3.0, the Internet-protocol, over-the-air television transmission standard that will give broadcasters new ways of delivering and monetizing content. “Think of this new platform […]

Just because consumers have lots of video delivery choices—whether it’s VOD or one of several other acronyms—doesn’t mean advertisers should think of those platforms as silos to be filled with ads. They should think holistically when balancing unit-based ads with impression-based ads while working to improve the ad-viewing experience, says Adam Gerber. Everything starts with […]

Interactive television ads are increasingly providing meaningful engagement for both brands and viewers. “It’s that direct access and ability to understand something in the moment that I think is really interesting,” says Jon Stimmel, Chief Investment Officer at global media and advertising agency UM. What needs more refinement is marketers’ understanding of specific households for […]