CES 2017

LAS VEGAS – Everyone agrees that data can help to inform better video advertising targeting. The question is how best to do it. The narrow range of options was the focus of a Beet.TV panel discussion at CES 2017 conducted at the OMD Oasis at The Venetian. It brought together representatives of 605, NBCUniversal, Omnicom […]

LAS VEGAS – In the early 1990’s, advertising agencies began to unbundle their media departments into separate operating units. Now television networks are unbundling their audiences to meet advertisers’ increasing desire for better ad targeting. “Cable programmers have always gone narrow in the sense that their individual networks tended to be much more niche content […]

LAS VEGAS – True one-to-one advertising targeting on digital and linear television is being held back by too many competing standards, says the President of VM1, the dedicated Verizon agency within Zenith. “The interoperability of all these different systems and platforms and devices just don’t play nicely together today. But over time it’s definitely where […]

LAS VEGAS – Even if there’s no disruption at CES there’s always good reasons for media agencies and their clients to meet “on nice, neutral ground,” says OMD Worldwide CEO Mainardo de Nardis. This year is no exception. “It’s all about innovation, even in years like this when there hasn’t been something terribly disruptive to […]

LAS VEGAS – To genuinely personalize today’s customer experience, marketers and agencies need to take a step back from the oceans of data at their fingertips. They should revisit the past and reacquaint themselves with some marketing basics, according to Adobe Video Solution’s Campbell Foster. “Too often, marketers forget about marketing 101,” the company’s Director […]

LAS VEGAS – Fewer but more impactful and relevant ads per commercial break aren’t going to happen overnight. But it’s the beginning of a road the industry must start to travel so as not to lose both current and future viewers of linear television. This was the consensus of media sellers and audience targeting specialists […]

LAS VEGAS – Until addressable television advertising achieves greater national scale with less system-by-system logistics, what excites Omnicom Media Group’s Chris Geraci is the potential versioning of commercials. It would involve having versions of creative within a national commercial unit to appeal to different households. “We’re just beginning to experiment with one company that’s involved […]

LAS VEGAS – Watson Ads, the cognitive advertising product that’s been available to brands exclusivity within The Weather Company app and on weather.com, will be released for wider use in apps and on websites sites later this quarter. In the meantime, in an interview at CES 2017 with Beet.TV, Weather Company CEO and GM Cameron […]

LAS VEGAS – Turns out you don’t have to be on Wall Street to run a futures market. It’s happening every day in the traditional linear television business, according to Turner’s EVP of Client Strategy & Ad Innovation. “Unlike digital, we’re actually working in a futures market,” says Michael Strober by way of explaining Turner’s audience […]

LAS VEGAS – People who are fixated on the future of television are missing a great opportunity to mine linear TV right now. And best prospecting asset is a marketer’s own first-party data. That’s the worldview of Michael Zimbalist, CMO of marketing technology company Simulmedia, as he takes in the activities at CES 2017. “The […]

LAS VEGAS – Is the advertising industry stuck on so-called intermediate metrics when judging the performance of their video campaigns? Oren Harnevo thinks so. The CEO and Co-Founder of Eyeview believes there’s no substitute for actual outcomes, meaning a person sees a video and then buys something. “A lot of the video campaigns you see […]

LAS VEGAS – Creative agencies are managing a transition from a service culture to a knowledge culture. Along the way, the heretofore trusty 30-second television spot has yielded to a continual search for the most appropriate video format and accompanying production budget, according to Troy Ruhanen, the CEO of TBWA. “I think a lot of […]

LAS VEGAS – While running Information Resources Inc. beginning in 1980, Gian Fulgoni had an insider’s view of the consumer research business. With comScore now measuring some 120,000 Internet-connected devices within U.S. households, he sees the future of media research requiring lots of cooperation and less reliance on panels. The company’s technology is now in […]

LAS VEGAS – An oasis is defined as a fertile spot in a desert where water is found. OMD’s Oasis encampment at CES 2017 provides a similar function, but one based more on providing strategic direction than liquid sustenance. “From year to year, the changes are enormous, overwhelming,” observes Monica Karo, the CEO of OMD […]

LAS VEGAS – At CES, media agencies assume the dual role of soothsayer and gardener. That’s because their clients come to the extravaganza with one main objective. “Show me what the future is going to be,” is how Brian Terkelsen, the Global President of Mediavest | Spark, explains it during a break in the activity. […]

Is there such a thing as too much data in advertising and media? Quite possibly, according to the CEO of Havas North America. “I still see an incredible rush to data,” says Colin Kinsella, noting the trend of agency holding companies combining their data assets and building “these incredibly large organizations” around said data. He […]

One expects to see faster chipsets from the NVIDIAs and Qualcomms of the world at CES 2017, plus more dazzling television screens. But for TV programmers, a lot of the action will focus on skinny bundles and trying to figure out how consumers will figure out their individual relationships with entertainment content. This is the […]

Following a record year for mergers and acquisitions in the digital advertising and media space, “the volume is going to continue” in 2017. That’s the forecast from LUMA Partners Founder & CEO Terry Kawaja, whose advice for startups in the artificial and virtual reality space—plus the Internet of things—is don’t be too early. In an […]

Pure programmatic buying of television ads in a real-time, automated fashion is not happening at any kind of scale today and probably won’t for a few years, according to the Chief Investment Officer for OMD USA. However, “A lot of the benefits from programmatic thinking are starting to come into the marketplace, mostly through the […]

While digital ad viewability probably won’t be the “topic de jure” at CES 2017, GroupM is taking into account modifiers for U.S. feed-based video advertising as it takes its own viewability standards global, according to Chief Digital Officer Rob Norman. “It’s pretty well known that the GroupM viewability standards aren’t met by feed-based environments,” Norman […]