Steve Ellwanger

CANNES – Creating better television ad experiences for viewers seems to be a never-ending conversation for agencies, brands and publishers. But judging from a panel at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, ad relevance and personalization is expected to vary widely by platform and provider for the foreseeable future. Reasons for the variations include corporate […]

For some advertising holding companies, transformation means pruning or consolidating assets accumulated over the last several decades. For IPG, it means paying $2 billion for consumer data giant Acxiom Marketing Solutions and its assets in more than 30 countries. “We believe that the future of marketing and not just media is data driven, and that […]

CANNES – Marketing departments need to think more like business owners as opposed to captains or coaches if they want their businesses to grow. That’s one of the early findings in the latest iteration of Marketing2020, which is led by Kantar Vermeer and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), among others. Kantar has been collaborating […]

CANNES – Even as the U.S. advertising and media industry seeks to move beyond legacy television viewing metrics from Nielsen, the company is embedding itself in data decisioning abroad. Australia and Hong Kong are two illustrative examples of its activity in 54 markets, as explained by Toni Petra, EVP of Nielsen Watch. Nielsen is about […]

CANNES – Innovative video advertising formats are on the upswing, creating the potential for “new-ad format fatigue” and the measurement challenges that accompany them. But if you can get marketer procurement people on board with the concept, that upswing could broaden considerably. These are among the takeaways from a panel discussion at the 2018 Cannes […]

CANNES – Just because Joe Marchese is probably the most outspoken advocate for reducing video advertising load and giving consumers more choices doesn’t mean he’s naïve about the challenges involved. Give him 20 minutes to explain those hurdles and lunar landings can seem simpler to achieve. Such was the case at the 2018 Cannes Lions […]

CANNES – When most people consider a data-management platform (DMP), they see data and technology. Damian Garbaccio of Nielsen, which Sony Crackle recently chose to power its addressable advertising capabilities, sees “connective tissue” between data and measurement assets. Garbaccio, EVP, Advertiser Direct & Marketing Cloud, is working with Sony Crackle and much of its connected […]

CANNES – IRI has almost 400 million reasons why television should no longer be planned and bought based on traditional age/gender metrics and related proxies. That’s the number of consumer loyalty cards the company can access to discern what virtually every U.S. household purchases offline. But until recently, data from those cards has taken a […]

CANNES – How does a huge marketer like Nissan convince its procurement people to explore new, non-traditional ways of reaching audiences and measuring those efforts? “We have this kind of internal joke that right now we have more pilots than American Airlines,” is how Allyson Witherspoon, Nissan’s GM for Global Brand Engagement, explained it. At […]

CANNES – Whether it’s marketers catching up, getting head or trying to leapfrog others, the need for transformation is the theme that drives everything, to Shane Ankeney, President, Havas Media Group North America. “They are looking to us as change agents, as transformation stewards, to help them do that because they realize that it’s very […]

CANNES—Television ratings have been a consistent metric for several decades, despite their limitations. Now that new TV ad formats are emerging, “There’s just no consistency,” according to Joe Marchese. That doesn’t seem about to change anytime soon judging from a one-on-one interview with Marchese, who is President of Advertising Revenue at Fox Networks Group, and […]

CANNES – With a background in sales at Turner and having participated in Upfront negotiations before the advent of digital media, Matt Prohaska has a unique perspective on OpenAP. Despite “a lot of energy and excitement” about the audience targeting consortium, he thinks it’s still ramping up during this year’s Upfront. “What we’re hearing from […]

CANNES – Within the current digital media ecosystem, it’s too easy to “mask over the blemishes of core data.” It’s this aspect of transparency in particular that marketers should be questioning, according to Matt O’Grady, CEO Nielsen Catalina Solutions. “Transparency is unquestionably the table stakes at this point,” O’Grady says in this interview with Beet.TV […]

CANNES – People in advertising and media disagree about many things, but a more consumer-centric approach to both video content and advertising is a big exception. This was more than evident during a panel discussion at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as part of the FreeWheel Forum on the Future of Television. […]

CANNES – It’s a particularly complicated and challenging time for agencies and their marketer clients. This is why Horizon Media’s Bill Koenigsberg tries to keep things simple. Clients want transparency, speed to market, integration “and they want you dealing with business outcomes,” the President, CEO & Founder of Horizon says in this interview at the […]

CANNES – If the powers that be at FreeWheel Advertisers could snap their fingers and make it happen, buying video across platforms would be as simple as buying a spot on traditional television has been for decades. Until then, their vehicle for achieving this goal is the company formerly known as Strata—now FreeWheel Advertisers. “It’s […]

CANNES – The Association of National Advertisers made its first trip to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this month with a mission: to induce global CMO’s to embrace and participate in its CMO Masters Circle pro-growth initiative. As Masters Circle was being established in the U.S., the ANA “started to recognize fundamental flaws […]

CANNES – Over the next couple of years, ensuring digital brand safety for marketers will become table stakes for publishers. In the meantime, GroupM is shifting the conversation with its clients to how ads perform better in truly brand-safe environments. “I think we’re moving into a stage where brand safety will become a commodity. Within […]

Put Rob Norman, Doug Ray and Lyle Schwartz on the same stage and you’re going to get some entertaining and sobering dialogue about the future of television in all of its varied permutations. So it was at the recent Beet Retreat in the City as the veteran trio talked about the promise of addressable TV […]

CANNES – Shortened by one day this year, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity attracted fewer agency people. But there was a 30% increase in attendance by brand marketers and a 20% rise in the number of consulting firms, according to MediaLink Vice Chairman Wenda Harris Millard. So the Festival is still a “very […]