the road to cannes

Does the future of advertising lay in curing the common cold? That may be so for Johnson & Johnson and its agency, J. Walter Thompson. Together, the pair have just bowed HealthyDay, an iOS app that shows US users local colds, flus and allergy symptoms as though they were checking the weather.  The project was implemented […]

The marketing industry may be going crazy for consumer data, but data is nothing without insight. Marketing company Y&R’s global CEO David Sable says the “digi-babble” and “BS” about data is missing something. “Data’s not new,” Sable tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Thirty years ago, we all grew up using data. Today, we have way more sales […]

CHICAGO — What are the biggest and most exciting trends affecting advertising and communication today? Mobile, quicker time to sale, and the fusion of creative advertising by customer data, according to the boss of one of the world’s biggest ad agencies. Speaking with Beet.TV in this interview ahead of her visit to the upcoming Cannes Lions […]

Publicis’ VivaKi unit recently reorganized to thread programmatic trading throughout its sibling departments in a bid to take data-based planning to new heights and new media, according to a stablemate exec. “We are thinking not just data-centric but data-centric as it involves your entire media investment,” ZenithOptimedia activation standards, insights and technology EVP Julian Zilberbrand tells Beet.TV in […]

Big media companies don’t usually buy vendors that want to rip up their historic main funding mechanism. But true[X] wants to reboot the way advertising is delivered by 21st Century Fox, which acquired it for $200 million in December. What is true[X]’s big idea? Rewarding viewers for interacting with good ads by showing them fewer ads overall, says […]

The recent decision of Publicis’ VivaKi to spread its Audience On Demand across the unit shows how “programmatic” methods of automating the trading of ads are becoming more embedded across ad agencies, says Rubicon Project marketplace development SVP Jay Sears. “A lot of the headlines have gotten it incorrect,’ he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The headlines […]

LONDON — When new screens arrive on the scene, many marketers instinctively get excited about new opportunities to deliver messages to consumers. But, whilst the new smartwatch category may whet appetites with the prospect of advertising to audiences’ wrists, the reality will have to be more sensitive, more nuanced, and may be more about input than output. […]

Just because analog media are disconnected, that doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from digital efficiencies. Case in point – programmatic, automated sales of display advertising are now gobbling up a large portion of the digital industry. Now ad tech house MediaMath is working to bring programmatic even to offline media. MediaMath‘s OPEN global media partnerships […]

LONDON — Back in January, media agency SMG announced NextTECHnow, a program to get closer to UK tech startups that can help bring innovations to brand campaigns. Since then, the programme has been kept somewhat under the radar. But the man who runs it now opens up on the rationale and its early progress. “In the […]

LONDON — Ad tech platforms need to do a better job of telling ad buyers exactly what kind of video placements they are bidding for, says an exec from one such company. “Standards like the RTB spec and the exchanges need to wake up start adding more metadata to these requests to enrich that buy for the brand,” according […]

LONDON — Thanks to the rise of advertising technology, the “Mad Men” of ad agencies have been joined by the so-called “Maths Men” of tech vendors. But these two camps need not be perceived as coming from different disciplines, says one agency boss. Pippa Glucklish, UK co-CEO of SMG, tells Beet.TV the “tension between data […]

LONDON — Like most technologies, so-called “programmatic” sales of online video ad inventory first took hold in the US. Now it is gathering pace across the pond. “We’ve seen … 40% more demand in the UK from Q1 to Q4,” according to video ad tech outfit TubeMogul’s UK MD Nick Reid. “We’ve also seen a 20% increase in CPM […]

LONDON — By the time Steve Parker gets to Cannes, he will have earned a glass or wine or two on a yacht. The UK joint CEO of media agency Starcom MediaVest will have completed a 500km, multi-day bicycle ride from the center of France, across a series of mountains and down to the Cote D’Azur. It’s a […]

LONDON — In the pantheon of first-party data competitors, ISPs surely wield the biggest sword. After all, they automatically know exactly which of their many services their broadband customers are subscribed to. Marketing the missing services using video is something video ad tech firm Videology is helping one UK telco do, according to UK MD Rich Astley, who would not […]

Looked at the ad tech lumascape lately? It’s not pretty; it’s confusing. But it may not be that way forever. The boom in advertising technology is just a natural, cyclical response to a world of complexity, says one of the sector’s top execs. At times, it’s pushed to the background as an enabler. And at […]

Last year’s deal in which WPP’s Xaxis programmatic unit divested its ad-serving technology to ad tech outfit AppNexus was forged in the snowy hills of the Swiss Alps. “For five years, we had a good relationship,” AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Last January in Davos, I found 15 minutes with […]

Media measurement firm Nielsen and programmatic ad tech outfit eXelate had already worked together for five years before the former’s acquisition of the latter this March. Now they are working on the same journey. “We act as their data management backbone, taking a lot of their offline data and activating it in the programmatic world,” eXelate […]

Ad group Publicis’ VivaKi digital division may be moving its programmatic experts out around the group, but that doesn’t mean VivaKi is dead. “VivaKi still lives on,” says SMG programmatic SVP Mac Delaney in this video interview. “It operates the SkyScraper platform, the database for all of the group’s campaign reporting. You still have VivaKi employees dedicated to the AOD operating […]

LONDON — Users’ news consumption habits are shaped by their devices and the time of day, says Guardian chief digital officer Tanya Cordrey. “In the morning, smartphones completely rule as people snack on bits of content before they go to work,” Cordrey tells Beet.TV. “At lunchtime, we see a huge pickup on desktop traffic. By […]

Advertisers don’t just want cheaper ad rates – they will increasingly search for more insight in to how their spend is really working, predicts one ad agency exec. “Client transparency is certainly going to be a big hot topic,” according to Zenith US CEO Dave Penski. “Are they getting what they’ve been promised? “Driving down […]