Steve Ellwanger

SAN FRANCISCO – It can be pretty scary when a Chief Growth Officer forecasts a big decline in advertising spending in the next five years, as Publicis Groupe’s Rishad Tobaccowala did recently. To his former comrade Laura Desmond, it’s a call to action that agencies are in a unique position to fulfill. That’s because agencies […]

Consumer purchases aren’t made in a vacuum. Which is why understanding all of the variables that precede actual purchases is the key to unlocking the consumer journey. “The idea that you go somewhere, you decide you want something, you make that purchase and then you’re done is incorrect. Inherently it just doesn’t make sense. It […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Investing in quality seems to be paying off huge for OpenX, the world’s largest independent advertising exchange. It just capped its 10th straight year of revenue growth, fourth consecutive year of profitability and its nascent video business saw 5,000% revenue growth in 2017. To CEO Tim Cadogan, the industry as a whole […]

Although using first and third-party to target linear television audiences is in the testing phase, it stands to increase the attribution TV gets for prompting consumer behavior. “At ESPN, we certainly think the audience buying future is upon us,” says Vikram Somaya, SVP, Global Data Officer & Ad Platforms at ESPN. In this interview with […]

Having launched last September 29, the OpenAP television audience targeting consortium platform of Fox, Turner and Viacom has more than 700 users. Meanwhile, Turner is beta testing mapping audience segments across its digital footprint. “We have a roadmap that takes us through essentially a 1.5 release and it’s going to go even beyond that,” Dan […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Since its merger with Rovi, TiVo has been on a mission to bulk up its television viewership data by working with service providers “to acquire as much TV viewership data as we could amass,” says Walt Horstman, the company’s SVP/GM, Automated Media & Advertising. “So that’s been very successful and we have […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Television isn’t very “people-based” right now, a dynamic that LiveRamp hopes to change by extending its IdentityLink platform to the TV space. “There’s a lot of untapped opportunity in TV,” says LiveRamp Co-CEO Anneka Gupta. “It’s not very measureable.” The IdentityLink extension was announced to coincide with RampUp 2018, the LiveRamp conference […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Matching IRI purchase data for 100+ million households with television ad exposure data from Alphonso’s 34 million household penetration produces “the missing piece” of multi-touch attribution. What finishes the puzzle is 12 million common households and more ways that TV can help to inform digital. “We’re seeing a full circle here where […]

Creativity in media is less about pushing one big message out to lots of people than it is generating conversations with consumers at every step of their purchase journey, says David Gaines, Chief Strategy Officer, Wavemaker US. “We’re moving away, I would argue, from media planning and saying ‘well, we actually need a content strategy,’” […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Based on a survey of 88 Association of National Advertisers members and the Everett Rogers innovation adoption model, addressable television advertising has reached its inflection point and will grow quickly. This is because 15% of respondents regularly include addressable in their TV plans while another 35% have experimented with it. “These numbers […]

Few people would contend that the modern consumer journey leading to purchases of products and services is easy to understand. But for Wavemaker, it’s a distinct way to both differentiate itself from other agencies while helping brand marketers cope with fragmentation and focus on optimizing the right things. This is why Wavemaker’s “principal and defining […]

The OpenAP audience-targeting consortium of Fox, Turner and Viacom has made it a lot easier to talk about advances in the traditional television ecosystem. And while last year’s Upfront was “very, very strong” for Fox, “this Upfront is going to be exponentially more powerful about focusing in on this type of conversation about precision audiences,” […]

While it’s clear that the ratings erosion in linear television “dam has broken,” more networks offering their audience audience targeting solutions means more walled gardens, according to Jonathan Steuer, Chief Media Officer, Omnicom Media Group. Meanwhile, during this year’s TV Upfront season, “There’s going to be a much bigger focus on delivery across all platforms,” […]

Declaring that “less is more” when it comes to the television viewing experience, NBCUniversal says it’s cutting advertising clutter by 20% in original, primetime programming and 10% across the portfolio starting this fall. In addition, the media giant is launching a new, 60-second, contextually programmed PRIME POD in the first or last break of a […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Imagine an advertising agency that creates its own data and technology, produces video content and sells ad inventory in that content and you’ve got IBM Watson Advertising. So it’s in a unique position to actually help clean up the digital ecosystem. Like many in the industry, Watson Advertising believes there are […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – After acquiring greater scale by purchasing Rodale’s global content business, Hearst still has to compete in an era when “everyone’s a content publisher” and some digital platforms are easier for advertisers to engage with than others. It’s against this backdrop that Troy Young, Global President, Hearst Digital Media, views the ever-evolving […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – An “embarrassment of riches” in the adtech space is an understatement when it pertains to the melding of Yahoo and AOL under Verizon’s Oath. This includes multiple demand-side platforms  that Oath is “aggressively consolidating down” to a single platform,” says CRO John DeVine. As Oath sorts out the DSP solution, “We’re […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – With the demand for digital transparency and brand safety only getting stronger, Hulu is taking a “very direct” approach to making its inventory available to advertisers via programmatic transactions. “We’re writing our own rules for our own game when it comes to automation and programmatic,” says SVP of Advertising Sales Peter […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Having spent about seven years on the client side at Microsoft, it’s quite natural for Meredith Brace to don her “brand hat” when it comes to the issue of safe advertising environments. “I still look at it through that point of view,” says Brace, who is SVP, Digital Sales, Fox Networks […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Like many adtech companies, AppNexus had long supported video. Two years ago, it decided to lean hard into the winds of change roiling the television industry by investing in its own video demand-side platform, supply-side platform and ad server. “The cool thing is it’s working,” says CEO Brian O’Kelley. That turns […]