Brian Lesser

SALISBURY, CT — In the last two years, data clean rooms have risen to prominence as a way for companies to continue connecting customer data sets while minding new privacy rules. But the clean room hype also risks blinding some buyers to the reality that data collaboration is about a lot more than just clean […]

Even as more marketers come to understand the value proposition of advanced advertising targeting, more sell-side silos are being erected. This is why a big focus under new GroupM North America CEO Tim Castree is to encourage the disaggregation of data, inventory and technology. While a lot of progress has been made in the last […]

SANTA BARBARA, CA – One of the big challenges for brands is being relevant in an environment of “continuous partial attention” on the part of consumers. That wasn’t an issue for AT&T at its recent Xandr Relevance Conference, according to Criteo’s Mollie Spilman. “They’re trying to pull off something really unique, but I can tell […]

SANTA BARBARA, CA – The new partnership between Altice USA and AT&T’s newly birthed Xandr represents the first realistic consolidation of national addressable television inventory, according to the head of Altice’s a4 advanced TV advertising business. “There has been a lot of talk over the past few years and many companies, partners and vendors have […]

SANTA BARBARA, CA – When IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg contemplates the rebirth of AT&T’s advertising and media operations in the form of Xandr, he sees a looming competitor to the most powerful digital giants. “There’s no question that lots of folks in the marketing and media world would like more alternatives to Google and Facebook, […]

COLOGNE – Turner’s Donna Speciale knows the value of consumer data for advertising targeting and has been working with AT&T as it prepares to unveil its future at The Relevance Conference later this month. “I’m thrilled to be attending the conference in the next week or two,” she says. “I want to hear Brian’s vision […]

CANNES — From May 2018, strict new regulations governing how companies can handle European citizens’ data will pose a challenge to everyone who handles customer or audience data. Amongst other stipulations, the European Commission’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) measures include: tighter consent conditions for the collection of citizens’ data. consumers can instruct companies to stop […]

CANNES — In the last couple of years, data-driven and programmatic advertising techniques have grown in importance to ad agencies, so many of the agencies have put the processes at the heart of their organizations. For many, that has meant a promotion for the executives who once ran outlier data divisions within an agency but […]

CANNES — Mobile is one of the biggest forces shaping digital marketing, marketers are challenged to agree common data standards, and advertising can enjoy a healthy future where commerce is taking place. Those were some of the conclusions of a panel of ad agency technology executives, who debated the topics in a session recorded by […]

CANNES — Will Netflix introduce advertising? That is a question on many minds in Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Madison Avenue alike. Often, the question is framed as an “either-or” in which Netflix would have to choose between continuing its current premium SVOD model or ripping it up in favour of ad funding. Previously, Ampere […]

CANNES — What do executives at the bleeding edge of marketing strategy think about the way the business is changing? That was the main question on the lips of moderator Jay Sears, the SVP of MasterCard’s advertising intelligence, when he chaired a panel discussion on the topic on the shores of the Cannes Lions festival […]

CANNES — The world of online advertising has grown up by using metrics like click-throughs as proxies for advertisers’ real end goals, like driving sales. Now, slowly, as new attribution technology hots up, brands are being promised the ability the ability to close the loop. But, whilst, to many, this evolution appears to be driven […]

CANNES — Many brands remain wedded to an advertising planning system developed by econometricians – but the so-called “marketing-mix modelling” doesn’t necessarily give them all the answers about campaign performance. In this discussion panel recorded by Beet.TV, ad agency tech executives say many clients are capable of moving forward – but they are caught between […]

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, […]

MIAMI – Less than six months into his role as CEO of North America for GroupM, Brian Lesser offers this vision of the future of media: it all will be digital in nature and bought programmatically. “That doesn’t necessarily mean the programmatic that we know and understand today,” Lesser says during a break at the […]

GroupM, the giant media agency unit of WPP, has named Brian Lesser as CEO of North America, succeeding Kelly Clark, the company announced on Thursday.   Lesser presently serves as CEO of Xaxis, the data and and digital media buying unit of WPP. Succeeding Lesser at Xaxis as CEO will be Brian Gleason , CEO of Xaxis […]

Why did you get in to advertising? For Brian Lesser, it was because his dad showed him the ropes. Now Lesser runs WPP-owned Xaxis, one of the technology companies helping make advertising more targeted and more relevant. “When I was a kid, my father ran advertising agencies … I always liked the commercials better than the […]

Becoming sort of holding company within its parent WPP, Xaxis is launching new, stand alone businesses.  The latest is called Light Reaction, a company that measures the impact of mobile advertising, says Brian Lesser, Global CEO of Xaxis in this interview with Beet.TV The new unit is an amalgam of two acquisitions of ActionX and […]

This year, there was a dramatic rise in adtech “stacks,” with Facebook’s relaunch of Atlas and the expansion of Google’s DSP business, but WPP wants to support “an independent ad tech ecosystem” where technology and media companies remain separate.   It is this direction that aligns with the recently announced alliance with AppNexus, explains Brian […]

CANNES, France — WPP’s GroupM recently declared it would no longer buy advertising spaces from open trading exchanges from next year. The global boss of GroupM’s data-driven unit backs that strategy. “It’s our ambition to not buy any media in an open marketplace,” says Xaxis global CEO Brian Lesser. “Our clients expects us to give them […]