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SEVILLE — The time for playing around with small change is over – it’s time to put your hand in your pocket and put real money on the table. That’s what one ad-tech exec says about the manner in which ad buyers have thus far approached the two biggest emerging media channels – mobile and video. “Marketers […]

As brands aim to strike the balance between acting as advertisers and publishers, the one rule of thumb is authenticity. That’s the key to producing both content for new digital channels, as well as ads, says Marisa Thalberg, Chief Marketing Officer at Taco Bell, who assumed the CMO post at Taco Bell earlier this year. “It’s not […]

How to Sell Anything 101 — use sex or pandas. Better yet, both. That’s what DDB NY did when working with the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in a pro bono capacity to drive awareness about the nature conservancy. “They wanted to come up with a way to engage the youth to think about endangered species,” says […]

FreeWheel, a Comcast unit, has acquired StickyAds, a Paris-based supply side platform (SSP).  The deal was announced earlier this week. The alliance between FreeWheel and StickyAds has been in place for several month, as we reported in September from DMEXCO when we interviewed StickAds CEO and co-founder Herve Brunet. We have republished that interview today.

Who would have thought that something so 1990’s as the digital video recorder (DVR) would help to transform political advertising? In the first presidential election to benefit from the granular targeting capabilities of addressable TV advertising, the joint venture between DISH and AT&T-owned DirecTV is helping political campaigns target more than 20 million households at the […]

The leader in addressable television advertising, with some 13 million households, AT&T is using a humorous commercial during the TV Upfront negotiating season to sell the power of addressable while speaking to concerns about its cost and scale. The commercial, “Stop Showing the Right Product to the Wrong Customer,” offers up three vignettes: a grownup […]

Political campaigns are at the forefront of combining linear and addressable television, with the latter’s frequent messaging changes bringing a whole new tempo to advertising on the medium. “It’s fascinating that of all the categories we work with, political probably is the most sophisticated in terms of the use of the data,” Ben Tatta, President, […]

The notion of “screen agnostic,” meaning a unified video form factor created by publishers for various devices and platforms, is out with the emergence of powerful social media, notably Snapchat and Facebook, explains Digiday’s Sahil Patel, in this overview of industry trends and a preview of Digiday’s upcoming video summit in Florida next month. The […]

Almost five months in to a partnership in which AT&T is helping TV advertisers reach consumers on mobile phones, the company enabling the process says results have been promising. Opera Mediaworks and AT&T announced the deal in November, with the former helping advertisers on U-Verse and DirecTV also reach consumers on smartphones. “For every addressable TV campaign […]

As video publishers and advertisers seek new audiences by embracing new platforms of distribution, notably Facebook, the challenges around monetization need to be solved,  This and other issues  facing the industry will be addressed at Digiday’s first video industry summit, set for Palm Beach April 10-12 For an overview on the topics and format, we […]

Integral Ad Science’s new partnership with MediaMath, an integration that enables advertisers to choose specific levels of video viewability for their campaigns, is one of several initiatives based on targeting at the placement level that will be replicated by others. Instead of doing video targeting at the domain level, Integral does it at the placement […]

DMEXCO, the giant digital media industry conference held annually in Cologne, will be bigger than ever this year with some 50,000 attendees.  And it will have a new content track on the transformation of television, says Christian Muche, co-founder of DMEXCO in this interview with Beet.TV He expects the show to attract many international broadcasters to attend […]

Viant, a holding company of several adtech units including Specific Media and Vindico, and the owner of MySpace, has been acquired by Time Inc, the company announced today.  Terms have not been announced. At CES in January, we spoke with CEO Tim Vandorhook about the company and the continuing value of MySpace for targeted advertising. […]

LAS VEGAS — When should you put an in-article video ad on a page – and when should you hold back? Two-year-old Genesis Media of New York is an ad tech platform aiming to sensitively place auto-playing out-stream video ads, a format that is gaining in popularity. “Video ad formats are easy to build, they’re difficult to […]

As hundreds of executives from the media and marketing worlds gathered yesterday under the AWNY banner, at glitzy dinner to honor media luminary Wenda Harris Millard, we sat down with two of the evening speakers: GE’s CMO Linda Boff and Carolyn Everson, advertising chief at Facebook. Both longtime acquaintances of Millard, they speak to her talent, […]

PALM SPRINGS — Since it was launched more than a decade ago, the fan wiki hosting site Wikia has built up a huge following for, essentially, static information. Now it wants to put some momentum in to that content. That’s why CEO Craig Palmer this month launched a big outgrowth of the site, calling it Fandom, a place where […]

The transformation of the media agency and its trading desk; the next evolution in programmatic; the new forms of video advertising across screens, will be among the topics explored at Beet Retreat, a two-day executive retreat being held on the Caribbean island of Vieques next week. Doug Ray, CEO of Carat U.S.  will be among the […]

PALM SPRINGS — As the digital media industry celebrates its 20 years and the milestone of being a $50 billion global industry, the business needs to become more diverse, says Michael Kassen, CEO of the powerhouse media consultantcy in this interview. We spoke with him on Sunday at the IAB’s annual leadership meeting.

LAS VEGAS –Marketers need to ensure that they are reaching consumers not only at the moment of purchase, but years before when they are beginning to develop affinity for products, says Scott Ferber, Chairman and CEO of Videology, in this taped interview from CES. For example, if a car buyer first hears about a Lexus when the […]

AOL announced a “strategic alliance” with Taboola for content discovery and recommendation.   The Taboola platform, which recommends content to users on various platforms, will be widely used across AOL media brands in the U.S. and Canada. The Wall Street Journal reports that as part of the deal AOL will take an equity stake in […]