Beyond the PreRoll: The Transformation of Video Advertising, a series from Cannnes ’16, presented by ConvertMedia

CANNES — If consumers are revolting against advertising because ad-tech has been too aggressive, why would anyone trust ad-tech to clean up the mess? That seems to be the rationale at AOL, whose content division is now taking a stronger role in making ad formats that don’t piss off its readers and viewers. “People are pushing back […]

CANNES — USA Today’s weekly virtual reality news show “VRtually There” may not even have launched yet – but that isn’t stopping the news publisher from touting the product to advertisers, all the same. Publisher Gannett announced in March that VRtually There would launch in the spring, bringing scheduled weekly news to consumers in virtual space. Speaking at […]

Back in the eighties, Eamonn Store piloted Royal Navy ships around the Caribbean. Now the former advertising executive is the latest chief at the helm of The Guardian’s New York-based US division. In choppy waters filled with threats and opportunities ahead, Store is plotting a course for a publisher that will swerve around advertising revenue chances if they don’t fit […]

CANNES – Having been the long time editor of Britain’s Daily Mirror, with a circulation of over 2 million, Piers Morgan now finds his influence on a bigger scale, with his 5 million followers on Twitter. As editor-at-large for the Daily Mail, he says that his use of Twitter can often time garner 2 million views […]

CANNES — Facebook’s announcement on Wednesday, in which it said it would prioritize updates from users’ friends and family over those from news organizations, has caused a shudder in media land. Many publishers have spent the last few years locked in a pattern to acquire social followers, and to distribute content on social platforms, in the hope of […]

CANNES — To license fee-payers in the UK, the idea that the BBC could run ads at all – let alone sponsored content – is anathema to the service. But that’s the UK. Beyond the border, BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, is charged with raising revenue from advertising. Last year, branded content, through its new BBC […]

CANNES — The emergence of an ad format that can bring more video advertising, even where there was no video content, heralds a new era of business, according to an executive in the ad-tech space. Video advertising platform Videology’s chief commercial officer Ryan Jamboretz is talking about “outstream”, the format which inserts auto-playing video ads between […]

CANNES — Why hire one yacht at Cannes Lions when you can hire two? Daily Mail’s MailOnline is surging – the site is a behemoth in traffic terms, fuelled mostly by advertising. That’s why MailOnline moored its yachts in the harbour during the advertising festival this month, to meet and greet brand partners. But MailOnline chief operating officer Rich Caccappolo […]

CANNES — Video ad tech vendor Eyeview is now up to $58m in funding across six rounds, after it took a $21.5m series D round from an investor in its native Israel this month. Qumra Capital is a new investor addition to the line-up. Eyeview says it will use the funding to further invest in its sales, […]

CANNES — It’s not even a year since The New York Times, a stalwart of text publishing, bowed a virtual reality app for VR-enabled mobile phones, showcasing reporting in 360 degrees. Already, NYTVR has 600,000 users, a company executive tells Beet.TV. “We never could have imagined how big it would become,” said New York Times advertising and innovation […]

CANNES – Believing that so much advertising has become noise, Time Inc. CEO Joe Ripp thinks the best way for advertisers to engage with consumers is to engage with the best story tellers. No surprise that they include magazine editors. In an interview with Beet.TV, Ripp extols the virtues of magazines by citing a recent […]

CANNES – When it comes to selling ads, can web publishers make more money by doing less? The co-founder and CEO of ConvertMedia thinks so, citing a “race to the bottom” with fixed banner ads. Yoav Naveh, who heads the outstream video supply side platform, believes publishers became fixated on fixed banner ad placements, to […]

With several companies having helped popularize the format, it is testament to the growing position of so-called “out-stream” video ads that there is now a supply-side ad platform (SSP) dedicated to them. ConvertMedia is that SSP, helping publishers deploy video ad units on text web pages and sell to buyers, in 15 different variants. Company chief revenue […]