Steve Ellwanger

As it has for many decades, financial giant Bank of America will have a presence at this year’s UpFront. But having recently changed to a calendar year for planning purposes, BOA will be focused mainly on selecting the most appropriate publishing partners. BOA’s agency, Publicis GroupeConnect, decided that the UpFront planning model “just wasn’t suiting […]

With all the talk about more precise audience targeting for linear TV, some basic things can get overlooked. For veteran buy-siders like Jason Kanefsky, who’s witnessing his 30th Upfront, those things include basic supply and demand dynamics. So while “we’re taking a lot of first steps in lots of different directions,” sometimes there’s progress in […]

Technology has done amazing things to create a variety of ways people can consume premium television content, helping to spark a “golden age” for content creators. But is the same technology and the data it enables encouraging the hyper targeting of audiences just because the capability exists? David Sable is quick to point out that […]

When Judy McGrath and Nick Shore talk about the impetus behind Astronauts Wanted, they sound like long-distance runners in a never-ending race. There’s no finish line per se, just another generation of young people whose entertainment desires they need to decipher and outpace. It’s a fast-paced mode that McGrath and Shore willingly chose when they […]

Unruly has been studying what makes people engage with digital content for more than a decade. So the company knows that it’s easier to emotionally connect with parents and that moms shouldn’t get all the attention because dads like to buy lots of stuff. And while there’s lots of attention paid by industry groups to […]

For three-year-old, female-oriented publisher Little Things, specializing in disseminating nothing but good news has become a path to five upcoming TV distribution partnerships reaching 50 million households. According to President & Chief Operating Officer Gretchen Tibbits, comScore data show that at 55.8 million women, Little Things claims the mantles of largest standalone lifestyle site and […]

Organized sporting events aren’t just about highlights and box scores anymore. As the worlds of sports, entertainment and culture collide, Bleacher Report wants to be known as home base for all the attendant conversation and commentary. “I think what we see now is people are really engaged in sports moments and they don’t traditionally see […]

MTV certainly contributed a lot to 1980’s entertainment. For DEFY Media, one of the most valuable learnings was the “fast fail model.” So while DEFY’s programming resembles traditional programming in areas like writers and talent, where it “varies a bit” is in MTV’s concept that no idea is bad, CEO Matt Diamond says in this […]

To make things easy for brands during the extravaganza that is the annual Digital Content NewFronts, DEFY Media has condensed its advertiser offerings to three options: buy, badge, build. “We want to make it easy that when they see our shows, they know how to work with us,” says DEFY Media CMO Andy Tu. Buy […]

A lot of the digital video platforms young people flock to today didn’t exist when POPSUGAR got started in 2006. But the company figured it could build audiences with personalities that young women could come to trust. Now the company produces about nine videos each day “so we’re not a publisher that waits around for […]

Having veered into negative territory over the past few years, the pendulum of industry discourse about digital video is swinging back to positive. And while there’s work to be done to streamline the planning and execution of premium video advertising, more marketers now have a deeper understanding of the benefits of being in its brand-safe […]

When MTV Networks alumni Judy McGrath and Nick Shore formed Astronauts Wanted in 2013, they certainly understood younger audiences. What has become a joint venture between McGrath and Sony Music Entertainment has a broadly defined audience of 16 to 30 but its “sweet spot” tops out at 24. Astronauts Wanted’s three main formats are premium […]

Most people wouldn’t search for and watch a video about treating Crohn’s Disease unless they thought they or a loved one might have the illness. This concept is what helps give HealthiNation a “highly qualified and targetable audience.” Combine that with the highly vetted nature of the publisher’s content—accredited by the non-profit group URAC—and the […]

When Newsy was created about 10 years ago, there wasn’t anywhere near the amount of content that exists today and calls itself “news.” Despite the crowded field, Newsy is launching a live, two-hour nightly news show this summer. With its close ties to the School of Journalism of the University of Missouri—close as in located […]

Young male-oriented UPROXX wants people to know that it’s not just another MCN trolling the YouTube waters to collect and represent talent. And it’s not just another publishing company “that pivoted to video.” Founded in 2008, UPROXX was building audiences with website publishing long before everything went video. It ultimately teamed up with “an incredible […]

Turns out that lots of entrepreneurs are great content creators, but most of them lack a broad enough platform to reach lots of people like them. “We want to be that platform to really help bring their voice to life,” says Bill Shaw, President, Entrepreneur Media. Entrepreneur not only provides these personalities with a high-profile […]

What do you get when you combine the office habitats of entrepreneurs with interior design? For a company called Mr. Kate, it’s a video series deal with Entrepreneur magazine and Staples. What started in 2011 as a simple blog with the goal of celebrating life through a more creative lens has blossomed into Mr. Kate, […]

Interactive entertainment giant Activision wants brands to know that eSports participants are an attractive, young audience that bears little resemblance to what people who don’t play video games think about gamers. Activision Blizzard’s Major League Gaming is on a crusade to bring this message to marketers worldwide. “The characteristics of the audience is the reason […]

The Internet Advertising Bureau’s latest Video Ad Spend Study shows a near doubling of marketer investments in original digital video since 2015 and a correlation between the buying activity and the NewFronts. Eight out of 10 marketers surveyed for the IAB “said they increased their spending on original digital video because of the NewFronts in […]

Following the 2016 Digital Content NewFronts, Trusted Media Brands managed to produce 65 videos for its advertising partners. Along the way it learned that it needed even more digital video capabilities. “We’ve got a really high bar to get past in 2017,” says Rich Sutton, CRO of the more than century old publisher “gets it […]