Steve Ellwanger

LOS ANGELES – The year 2017 could see set-top box and other forms of addressable advertising become truly scalable, while a great deal of work is still to be done on creative versioning of campaigns. That’s the prognosis of GroupM Chairman Irwin Gotlieb, who doesn’t think media owners should be thrown “under the bus” because of […]

LOS ANGELES – One of the challenges of understanding cross-screen content consumption is knowing the right time to go cross-screen with advertising messages and at what depth. Then there is the separate hurdle of finding enough places to target consumers with addressable ads. These are two subjects that occupy the mind of Kathleen Brookbanks, Chief […]

LOS ANGELES – While in the larger world there’s nothing wrong with building silos, the advertising industry just has to break the habit when it comes to the digital space. Every time there’s a “new thing,” a new vertical is created even as consumers are craving ever more seamless experiences. “We as an industry, in […]

LOS ANGELES – There’s something reassuring about knowing that a company called Target is very good at targeting its guests. In return, they inform the retailer about their television preferences along with “how they’re moving from one screen to another,” says Kristi Argyilan, SVP of Media, Guest Engagement & Measurement. “Because we’re a retail organization, […]

VIEQUES, PR – Six years ago, the NewFronts were birthed to serve a burgeoning video marketplace. Sellers hoped to cash in on consumer viewing behavioral shifts while charging advertisers broadcast television-like CPM’s. “Guess what happened? Nobody was buying,” recalled Carl Fremont, Global Chief Digital Officer at media agency MEC. That’s because there was no measurement […]

Marketer perceptions about the purpose of digital video advertising—branding versus performance—is changing, with the travel category one of the strongest proponents of performance. This is one of many findings of a research report commissioned by Eyeview and conducted by Sequent Partners at the end of 2016. As explained by Sequent’s Jim Spaeth at the recent […]

Matching media exposures to sales data shows that while creative and reach are the first two main drivers of purchases, respectively, context is a solid third. Which means that within the digital realm, there’s much work to be done understanding all the contextual permutations. These were key takeaways from observations shared by Nielsen Catalina Solutions […]

LOS ANGELES – OpenAP, the fledgling audience-buying partnership of Fox, Turner and Viacom, will use Accenture for back-end posting of campaign results as it seeks to add more publishing partners. “The third-party post will come from a company who’s got a great reputation in the media management field,” says Howard Shimmel, Turner’s Chief Research Officer. […]

Lots of data and great creative for ad campaigns are meaningless unless you can be sure they’re actually driving revenue. Because at the end of the day, “It’s what the C-suite cares about,” says author and keynote speaker Andrew Davis. Davis was among some three dozen advertising and media experts who gathered for the recent […]

LOS ANGELES – Despite great advances in digital and television audience targeting, platform-specific creative is a milestone the industry has yet to achieve. Until a silver bullet arrives, there’s some “simple stuff” that agencies and brands can do, according to Amanda Richman. “One of them being, let’s bring together all the right parties that all […]

LOS ANGELES – By their very nature, financial institutions are held to standards of conduct that most marketers never have to worry about. So when Bank of America’s Lou Paskalis talks about brand advertising showing up alongside digital content that promotes terrorism, he’s unflinching about what needs to change. “We just can’t be in business […]

LOS ANGELES – Taco Bell CMO Marisa Thalberg knows that despite viewing shifts, traditional television is still a powerful medium for the fast-food giant. What she finds “very scary” is spending money on digital platforms given issues like viewability, fraud and the potential for the company’s ads to appear in the wrong environment. “TV’s still […]

LOS ANGELES – Some brand marketers are tired of hearing about things like ad tech stacks, data integrations, measuring click rates and figuring out last-touch attribution. But there is a growing focus on things like dynamic ad insertion to tailor messaging to the right audience at the most appropriate time. “What they want to know […]

LOS ANGELES – When there was just linear television, delivering the commercials—i.e. the creative—to TV stations was a fairly standard if not boring process. But with the explosion of viewing across screens and instantaneous delivery of creative, it’s a whole new ballgame. The “dirty little secret” that much of the industry is either unaware of […]

LOS ANGELES – More than half (52%) of 250 agency and brand leaders surveyed by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video believe that improving the video ad experience for consumers is the biggest challenge for the industry. The findings underscore the need for creative diversity so that messaging is appropriate across all screens. Given the 2017 […]

LOS ANGELES – The last few years have been contentious times between advertisers and their agencies on a number of fronts in their day-to-day relationships. But as the CEO of the Association of National Advertisers gathers with his agency counterparts, Bob Liodice puts the onus on brand marketers to rein in the digital supply chain […]

LOS ANGELES – Two years after Roku starting working with Nielsen on audience measurement it’s become the first OTT platform to offer demographic guarantees based on Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings. “It’s a huge mile marker for our industry,” Jim Lombard, Head of Advertising Sales, says in this interview today with Beet.TV during a break at […]

VIEQUES, PR – Seth Walters is “insanely passionate” about commerce-enabled interactivity. Which makes him a logical evangelist for the power of connected television targeting and measurement. As Senior Partner for Interactive & Connected TV at Modi Media, the advanced TV unit of GroupM, it’s Walter’s job to help GroupM’s clients understand the opportunities for messaging, […]

VIEQUES, PR – Imagine a future where the standard commercial load in one hour of video content is just five minutes. Where Facebook and YouTube have big subscription businesses reminiscent of traditional cable operators, and Netflix just might start selling ads. These were among a variety of possible scenarios explored at the annual Beet.TV Executive […]

VIEQUES, PR – Knowing what different types of triggers impact consumers during their purchase journey must be done on a brand by brand basis before determining how to find those consumers. “We have to first start with an insight,” says MEC’s Global Chief Digital Officer, Carl Fremont. At MEC, the process is called Momentum and […]