Beet.TV Coverage of Cannes Lions 2017

CANNES — Twitter says it wants to help down-play shady user-generated content (UGC) in the advertising offerings it serves up to big agencies. in this video interview with Beet.TV, Twitter agency development director Stephanie Prayer says the network is trying to soothe brands’ concerns over the safety of environments in which ordinary folk publish their own […]

CANNES — Peering in to consumers’ credit card purchase history to target them with advertising is no longer a new prospect in digital media. But now that same opportunity is coming to TV. Nielsen Catalina Solutions already helps advertisers target ads using so-called “buyergraphic” data, using its database of purchase history from 90mn households. Now […]

CANNES – Live streaming video is helping to break down the perceived barriers between traditional television and premium video, while OTT viewing continues to see tremendous growth, according to the latest FreeWheel Video Monetization Report (VMR). In this interview with Beet.TV, VMR author Ying Wang discusses the first quarter VMR findings, which show that premium […]

CANNES — As research continues to show growth in podcast consumption and digital music subscription continues to go from strength to strength, advertisers once more have an opportunity to embrace audio. The prospects for radio advertising had been looking shaky. But now new advertising technology looks like helping networks benefit from the same kind of […]

CANNES — Chatbots may have been one of the big tech trends of 2016, but few advertisers have yet embraced the idea of making artificial brand personas that consumers can interact with. Mindshare is one agency that has dipped its toe in the water – but it now thinks artificial intelligence technology may help catapult […]

CANNES — Artificial intelligence technology will significantly upgrade the ways in which marketers can develop models that find the right consumers online, according to a Nielsen executive currently rolling out the technology across Europe. Nielsen added Nielsen AI to Nielsen Marketing Cloud in April, bringing machine learning that optimizes audiences based on consumer behaviour. But […]

CANNES – It would make a great question on Jeopardy: which 129-year-old legacy print media brand is the top brand account on Instagram? Answer: National Geographic. “I always kind of take that as an encouraging thing that we have Millennials and Gen Z’s interested in the subject areas where National Geographic has always been a […]

CANNES — He is better known to Beet.TV viewers as the man who helped grow Publicis’ programmatic advertising business. But this year Marco Bertozzi jumped out of the agency world and in to a music subscription startup, when he was named Europe VP and head of sales for Spotify. Why music? Because Spotify has a […]

CANNES — He had spent six years leading the build-out of GroupM’s programmatic audience-buying division Xaxis in the EMEA region, but now Caspar Schlickum has moved on to another part of the sprawling WPP empire. Last year, Schlickum left Xaxis to become CEO of Wunderman’s APAC division – a move he says was motivated by […]

CANNES — Could the technology behind Bitcoin be used to power digital advertising data, not just a digital currency? At Cannes Lions, the festival of advertising creativity, technology and ad execs alike have been discussing the potential application of blockchain. But “potential” may already be an out-of-date description – because Comcast used Cannes to announce what […]

CANNES – NBCUniversal’s Symphony initiative keeps adding new players to its promotional ensemble, wherein all company units pull to together to promote a specific initiative. This year Symphony will benefit from NBCU’s partnerships with the likes of Apple News, BuzzFeed and Snapchat. Therein lies a paradox of sorts, given NBCU’s public bashing of some of […]

CANNES – When Lucas Cridland compares broadcast television to digital video, he sees data gaps and a lack of flexibility in the former. “The dynamic nature of the premium marketplace is constantly moving,” says the President of Dentsu Aegis Networks’ Amplifi US. But while there seems to be “a lot of innovation on the supply […]

CANNES – Is the semantical divide between “television” and “digital video” crumbling? Judging from discussions at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, the answer is yes. At least it is in the mind of Matt Spiegel, Managing Director of strategic advisory and business development firm MediaLink. Following his role as moderator of the FreeWheel/Beet.TV New […]

CANNES — At the latest assembly of the world’s largest festival for creative marketing, the hottest topic up for discussion was… artificial intelligence? It may seem incongruous, but, as executives in industries the world over scramble to assess the benefits promised by AI, advertising decision-makers are amongst those getting excited. “At the agency level, we […]

CANNES – Advertisers aren’t getting less protective of their audience targeting data but they are increasingly willing to work with data and content providers. At the same time, they’re relying less on intuition to choose the most suitable programming for their brands, according to Mel Berning, A+E Networks’ President of Sales. He sees these trends […]

CANNES – As more marketers seek to use data to achieve the kind of accountability that direct-response media has typically provided, agencies are improving the way they handle sensitive consumer information. In the past month alone, Dentsu Aegis Network rolled out a PII-based data platform and appointed a global data compliance officer in advance of […]

CANNES — Clippy was never this clever. Artificial intelligence is now taking us on a journey to a time where we will interact with lifelike digital avatars in virtual worlds populated by thousands of artificial actors. That is the vision of artificial intelligence pioneer Mark Sagar. He should know – the CEO of Soul Machines […]

CANNES – Call it digital déjà vu. The global convergence of television and video that has set off a wave of consolidation and new market entrants in the United States first began to emerge in Europe about two years ago. Fast-forward and you had deals like NBC and Comcast and now the pending acquisition of […]

CANNES — Brands spend too much time measuring the wrong metrics and should, instead, switch focus to look at a holistic overview of what matters in world in which they take back control. That is according to the chief of the media agency network launched by Omnicom last year. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Hearts & […]

CANNES — GroupM is reconfiguring its agency businesses for a new advertising world in which advertisers expect to measure and pay for ads that bring real, identifiable business results. In this video interview with Beet.TV, GroupM north America CEO Brian Lesser explains the group is responding a world in which the agency business model is fast-changing, […]