Steve Ellwanger

COLOGNE –Tens of thousands of attendees, one million square feet of floor space inhabited by 1,100 exhibitors and 18 different conference stages. Navigating DMEXCO 2017 efficiently in just two days can be a real challenge. “We’ve reached a level where we always wanted to be from the beginning on,” says Christian Muche, Co-Founder of the […]

COLOGNE – After more than a year and innumerable reports and headlines, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell still doesn’t understand the genesis of widespread commentary about agency-client transparency in the United States. He says those who are worried about transparency should take a look at the Middle East, Japan and China. “It’s unfortunate what has […]

COLOGNE – Despite the many innovations birthed by the advent of digital marketing, there’s still much to be done to deliver ads to people that don’t annoy them. This is why IBM and its Watson artificial intelligence assets are teaming up with demand-side platform pioneer MediaMath to create an infrastructure that supports cognitive bidding. The […]

COLOGNE – Sky TV is developing a portal for advertisers to plan their addressable television campaigns. Just don’t say it’s about “biddable” inventory. To Jamie West, Group Director of Advanced Advertising at Sky, programmatic transactions in the broadcast world are about automation. The notion of biddable inventory is not “particularly relevant for a broadcast world,” […]

COLOGNE – If you want to understand what future social commerce will be, go to China. That’s the advice of Havas Global MD Dominique Delport. “I think that we are on the verge of a massive transformation in the way brands are trading with people directly,” Delport says during a break at the 2017 DMEXCO […]

COLOGNE – With the ad industry’s preoccupation with premium video and digital media transparency, things like search engines tend to fly beneath the radar. But considering how search has morphed into personal digital assistants, it’s still a key driver of growth and opportunity for advertisers. This is particularly resonant for Microsoft, which unveiled Bing in […]

COLOGNE – As the number of ad tech providers ballooned from 350 in 2012 to 3,500 in 2016, so did advertiser concerns about digital media transparency. “It became so complex and messy that we needed to push the envelope,” says Dominique Delport, Global MD of Havas Group. To provide more clarity and faith in the […]

COLOGNE – The industry is at an inflection point in the maturation of programmatic transactions. Ahead of the curve lies a big influx of brand advertising dollars from buyers who have been clearly articulating their needs about ecosystem transparency. This is the viewpoint of Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of PubMatic, the marketing automation software […]

It’s hard enough for brands to deal with the leviathan that is Amazon.com. It doesn’t get any easier when those brands also are dependent on many different retailers to sell their products. Performance marketing technology provider Criteo, perhaps best known for its online consumer retargeting expertise, is leveraging its learning loop capabilities to assist not […]

Incremental change and “a minor tweak” don’t cut it in the media agency world anymore. This is the rationale behind the coming together of WPP’s Maxus and MEC in a new entity called Wavemaker, “a fantastic process that’s been conducted by bringing the teams together around the word,” says WPP Chief Digital Officer Rob Norman. […]

Could blockchain technology, with its security and transparency, cure the ills of an often-murky digital media ecosystem? GroupM’s Rob Norman believes the attributes of blockchain will be a focus of the upcoming DMEXCO advertising and media trade show because of “an inevitable demand” from advertisers and agencies for some type of open ledger system for […]

What exactly constitutes “transparency” in the digital media ecosystem? To Hearst’s Mike Smith, it’s a multidimensional subject of debate that he parses into three categories: Pricing of ad inventory, who sells it and ad fraud involving creative assets. In this interview with Beet.TV, Smith acknowledges the complexity of the programmatic transaction path and talks about […]

Retailers and ecommerce companies have joined verticals like high-end fashion and luxury in embracing programmatic digital advertising buys, increasingly attracted by audience guarantees. “Ecommerce has definitely grown into a major business,” says The New York Times Director of Programmatic Advertising, Sara Badler. Under Badler’s direction, the Times is making a major push to expand its […]

About a year ago, performance marketing technology provider Criteo had a lock on lots of e-commerce companies. What it lacked was access to brand marketers that did not have their own e-commerce sites. “Those brands have a challenge in creating a performance solution because the sales are actually measured in third-party ecommerce sites that they […]

While there might be some bad players in the digital media ecosystem, transparency basically boils down to having a full understanding of the ins and outs of programmatic transactions. What’s hampered understanding is that while automation has speeded things up, machines can’t watch for the things that humans can. This is how PubMatic CMO Jeff […]

Not that long ago, the only presence Condé Nast might have had on Netflix was when a Sex and the City character was reading an issue of GQ or Vanity Fair. Now the publisher has its own Netflix production recently green-lighted for a third season. It’s all part of the evolution not only of Condé […]

Creation of a shared, collaborative media ecosystem is limited only by the willingness of buyers, sellers and everyone in between to work together to solve individual and common problems. Videology Chairman and CEO Scott Ferber believes there is no better venue in which such competitive camaraderie can be nurtured than Beet Retreat Miami 2017, where […]

Although it may feel like programmatic advertising has been around forever, it’s actually “still new and it’s still very much involving,” says Condé Nast’s Jim Norton. Along the way, the industry has gone from an open-bidded marketplace where it was “a bit of spray and pray and hope you get good impressions and good audiences” […]

Think local, act local could well describe the mindset at Advance Local during its two-decade evolution from a newspaper group to a print and online publisher. Now generating some 50 million monthly unique visitors across 10 sites, the company is the #1 news and information site in each of its markets, per comScore. “We’re really […]

Sara Badler is quite direct when discussing programmatic advertising at The New York Times. Much like the Times itself. “We are still very much a direct business. We are a programmatic direct business,” Badler, who is Director, Programmatic Advertising for the Times says in this interview with Beet.TV. One thing that distinguishes the Times is […]