Advertising

This year, all the hot advertising talk is about the linking of planning, targeting and buying for TV ads and ads on handheld internet devices. For TV viewers distracted by touchscreens during commercial breaks, Teletrax has been gaining attention for allowing brands that are advertising on the living room big screen to also buy ads on social […]

So far, “programmatic” technologies for targeting and automating online ad buying have revolutionized the display ad segment. They have also made big in-roads in to video ads. Whilst few expect such a big bang in the television sector any time soon, WPP’s programmatic unit Xaxis expects to have its technology on-stream by the start of 2016. […]

Across the advertising industry this year, the main challenge seems to be uniting brands’ understanding of how consumers respond to ads across the many different media they now use. One more vendor tackling that problem is Tapad, whose “device graph” model aims to help clients do just that. “We’re working with a (television) manufacturer that has […]

CHICAGO — If you haven’t yet heard of 4C Insights, the data science company that just acquired Teletrax, the scale of insights it is processing suggests you soon will. The Chicago-based company is helping advertisers better understand how to target users of social networks by comprehending their response to brands, interests and media behaviour. “We look at […]

New York-based AppNexus‘ real-time ad bidding platform has built the company a position as one of the leading advertising technology vendors out there, at a time when contenders are racing to hail the virtues of their own suites. But CEO Brian O’Kelley sees one big differentiator between his company and the likes of Facebook, which […]

TV may not yet be fully addressable to advertisers in the same way the internet is, but that isn’t stopping a collection of platform operators and ad tech vendors from trying to make it a reality. The Trade Desk, a demand-side advertising platform, is working to bring more ad targeting to Roku, the connected TV […]

CANNES — So-called “addressable TV”, in which TV sets can now speak back to broadcasters, are tantalizing with the promise of household-level ad targeting. But addressable TV is not just about more refined TV targeting – the device in the living room is one platform that will feed in signals to an overall system which will produce […]

CANNES — The $72 billion US TV advertising industry is premised on making 30-second spots that target consumers. Imagine what happens when TV sets give advertisers the cues they need to target customers individually. Michael Bologna, president of GroupM’s Modi Media division, which is working on just that proposition, says 2015 is the year it […]

CANNES — After “programmatic” methods of refining and automating the planning and buying of digital display ads took off, many are wondering when the same technology will get traction in the TV world. But that’s the wrong question to ask, according to GroupM global chairman Irwin Gotlieb. He says the same approaches have been used since TV […]

CANNES — The fact that many the world’s biggest brands recently started to review their long-held agency relations, putting them out to tender once again, is making agencies nervous but will refocus their minds on results, according to one agency boss. Adweek reports, in the last six months, as advertising technology opportunities swirl around them, 20 big brands […]

CANNES — BBC News has managed to mix online video and text since the late 1990s. But why keep the two separate? Now the organization is ensuring both are on-screen at the same time, launching a product called “stick video”. “The idea is that the video player moves with you on the screen,”BBC Global News sales […]

CANNES — The CEO of video ad planning, buying and execution tech platform Videology acknowledges, right now: “The vast majority of television-based media is not fully addressable.” So he imagines a world where, today, technology supports TV ad buying that is merely “data-informed”, evolving later “all the way up to fully addressable”. With New York-based Videology, […]

CANNES — When the Media Ratings Council specced out what truly constitutes a “viewable” ad impression, in a world increasingly falling victim to fraudulent ads, ad buyers rejoiced. And then the whole system began fragmenting. Now, it seems, some customers are getting confused about which viewability trackers are right. “As viewability becomes more and more a transitionary […]

CANNES — Many brands are now beginning to take the opportunity to buy ads through programmatic platforms purely under their own steam, rather than enlisting ad-buying agencies. But what is the experience like? Whilst such a feat is eminently possible, Michael Brunick, partner in programmatic ad advisory service Unbound, says: “Several brands we’ve been working with have been doing programmatic […]

CANNES — Heineken may not be able to take advantage of everything programmatic ad buying techniques offer – but that doesn’t mean it can’t use programmatic technology to better understand its customers. USA region senior media director Ron Amram tells a Cannes Lions panel discussion: “We are not big users of data, we don’t have a lot of […]

CANNES — In the ad tech arms race, a plethora of platforms claims to be “full-service”, “end-to-end”, or “full-stack”. But their dream of providing the entire solution to agencies and buyers may be wide of the mark – more likely, customers like to mix and match the tools they use. “There’s no one-size-fits-all,” Carat Global executive […]

CANNES — We have heard a lot this year about how SMG’s VivaKi has moved much of the functionality of its distinct Audience On Demand programmatic division out in to sibling agencies. That has been the internal reorganization story. But what do clients think? “MediaVest has completely rethought staffing on our business. For the most part, it’s been […]

CANNES — A common theme out of the recent Cannes Lions advertising festival is advertisers’ quest to turn messages in to actual ecommerce sales. That’s what agency Omnicom’s digital CEO Jonathan Nelson is shooting for, too, with big partners. “We’re huge partners with DoubleClick, we’re big Atlas partners,” he tells The Weather Company CEO David Kenny in […]

CANNES — TV ads aren’t as effective as they could be online because viewers instinctively want to be able to exert choices over otherwise passive content. That’s according to an ad exec whose company enables that functionality. “We have incredible budgets for television commercials. What we haven’t really seen is incredible production budgets for digital […]

CANNES — The rise of automated, super-targeted advertising known as “programmatic” has been complex and fast. Sometimes, ad tech players have not helped themselves by obfuscating their offering in obtuse language. But one of the key execs in the space says he observers advertisers increasingly wrapping their head around the prospect and its potential. “We’ve […]