Exploring Data & Technology as Catalysts for Creativity, a series from Cannes, presented by comScore

CANNES — They have traditionally been regarded as two distinct places on the marketing “funnel”. But could “branding” and “performance” advertising now be colliding together? Whilst the former tactic aims to switch on consumer interest, the latter sees marketers pay for end results. Now there are so many ad technologies out there, things are changing, says Bob […]

CANNES — In the emerging world of digital video advertising, now personalized ads can be made, on-the-fly, by assembling disparate scenes from alternate narratives in to a single, audience-specific ad spot. That’s the theory. So who’s responsible for the execution? Truth is, the new practice of dynamic ad creative is still shaking out – and whether it […]

CANNES — During its nine years as a digital marketing platform, Jivox has stayed relatively under the radar during what have been the boom years of the discipline. But now the company, whose IQ platform is used by clients including Bayer, Bose, Condé Nast, Toyota and Johnson & Johnson, is enjoying another time in the sun, after […]

CANNES — After Outbrain, Taboola, ShareThrough and other native advertising technology offerings, comes Plista. That is the German native ad tech company acquired by GroupM two years ago. Since then, the agency’s Xaxis unit has been deploying native ad formats around the world, following recent launches in Russia, China and the US. “Bringing it to the […]

CANNES — TV ads bought using programmatic technology will grow to represent just 1% of the overall US TV ad spend in 2016, according to a recent eMarketer forecast. But, if you thought that was small, just look at the Asia-Pacific region, where things are still in their “infancy”, according to the Group M programmatic exec […]

CANNES — The advertising technology industry is now replete with metrics and currencies. What if there was another one added to the mix? The chief of a programmatic firm acquired by Group M’s Xaxis division is advocating a switch of focus. “We (as an industry) have been talking a lot about performance metrics and if people […]

CANNES — Twelve months after it launched an ability for advertisers to introduce custom logic to ad buying, AppNexus claims 25 clients are using the tool. Last year, the ad-tech platform bowed AppNexus Programmable Bidder (APB), a way for buyers to connect with AppNexus via API. One part of that was Bonsai –  a way to let  advertisers “decide […]

CANNES — One of the hottest topics in advertising right now is dynamic creative – the ability to tailor not just the buying of inventory in real-time, but the message served in the ad, too. Numerous software vendors are now offering ad buyers variants of this customization, and Group M’s Xaxis says it can be pretty […]

CANNES — One screen good, two screens better… but, in households with multiple people and multiple devices, how are advertisers and content owners supposed to understand consumption anymore? That’s where media measurement agencies come in – and that’s why digital measurer comScore agreed to merge with TV mesaurement firm Rentrak last year. The outcome – a combined […]

CANNES — TV ads targeted at individual households may be more expensive than those traditionally delivered en masse – but extra data that closes the loop between ad spend and sales lift will make things cost-effective in the long run. That’s according to a comScore TV chief. comScore national TV EVP Chris Wilson says his media measurement company […]

CANNES — WPP-owned data-driven audience-buying platform Xaxis is growing fast. Launched five years ago, the outfit is now going in to overdrive. The company has grown from fewer than 100 to more than 1,500 employees, to more than 3,000 brand customers and more than $1bn in revenue, 15% of which comes from outside WPP and its Group […]

CANNES – If practitioners in the programmatic advertising space could not only educate creative and media agencies as to the benefits of data and technology but also inspire them, then all parties might just reinvent marketing. This frank assessment from Caspar Schlickum, Co-Founder and CEO of Xaxis EMEA, the WPP Group programmatic unit, came after […]

CANNES – What do Taylor Swift and Sarah Palin have in common? They’re both between the ages of 25 and 54—a heretofore one-size-fits all demographic for brands like Special K but a meaningless metric for today’s more precise targeting, says Aaron Fetters, SVP of Marketing Solutions at measurement and analytics provider comScore. Fetters should know […]

CANNES – Noting an “inflection point” involving creativity, data and technology, the chairman of WPP Group’s Xaxis programmatic unit has this message for the creative community: Give us as many levers as you can to help us optimize advertising campaigns. “Creativity has been a little behind in terms of taking advantage of all the data […]