YouTube

The TV upfront buying mechanism has already endured a pandemic and a recession in the past few years. Now, throw in inflation, economic figures that run the gamut, and a writers strike, and you’re left with a market that nobody has ever seen before, let alone predict. “The key word is uncertainty,” said Dave Campanelli, […]

CANNES—For global oil and gas conglomerate Shell, using social media influencers is all about generating positive brand perceptions. “These are ultimately the measure of success,” says Americo Silva, Global Head of Integrated Brand & Communications. Visit the Shell website and you won’t see promotions for the company’s liquid products. Instead, the issue of climate change […]

About a year after sunsetting its own apps in favor of distribution via YouTube and virtual MVPD’s, Vevo expects to sell out “a nine-figure body” of music video advertising inventory in the UpFront. It’s part of Vevo’s plan for “returning music television to the living room,” says Kevin McGurn, President of Sales & Distribution. In […]

If anyone understands what it’s like to work inside one of the walled gardens, it’s David George, who left Facebook as Head of Mobile Publisher Solutions just over a year ago. Now as the CEO of Pixability, he’s helping to expand the company’s data and machine learning platform from social media giants like Facebook and […]

With YouTube’s TV and Originals still evolving, the company is trying new ways to bring more valuable ad inventory to this year’s digital content NewFronts. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Tara Walpert Levy, YouTube VP, Agency and Brand Solutions, says YouTube TV, the cable-free $49.99-a-month TV service, is now being offered to advertisers outside of Google Preferred, […]

The re-grouping of content on YouTube continues apace, upending the playing field for some content creators and raising concerns about content discovery amid the platform’s “tunneling effect,” says iCrossing’s Jeff Ratner. “I think YouTube is creating their own stratification of their content. Obviously, they took to heart a lot of the brand safety challenges of […]

What can advertisers expect from YouTube this year? Human vetting of the most-watched content, more signals from the rest of Google’s services, influencers on-tap and shorter ad formats. That is according to Tara Walpert Levy, the video platform’s agency and brand solutions VP.  We spoke with her Monday after the MediaLink NewFronts kickoff breakfast hosted by […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Like many adtech companies, AppNexus had long supported video. Two years ago, it decided to lean hard into the winds of change roiling the television industry by investing in its own video demand-side platform, supply-side platform and ad server. “The cool thing is it’s working,” says CEO Brian O’Kelley. That turns […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Unilever is working with social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube on a “collaborative” basis to improve their content for the good of society while building a private blockchain to tackle transparency issues surrounding its own digital advertising. “The swamp isn’t very transparent,” says Unilever Chief Marketing & Communications Officer Keith […]

When you’re fashioning what’s designed to be a cutting-edge marketing agency, it’s good to know what not to do. One example is not trying to recreate what a creative agency does but being flexible when it comes to deciding who produces content for clients. “We’re set up to be super flexible,” says Noah Mallin, Head […]

Nielsen is giving its media clients a standardized way of measuring their content viewing on distribution heavyweights Hulu, Facebook and YouTube with the latest expansion of its Digital Content Ratings. Participating TV and digital publisher clients can now capture incremental viewing of their content within their reported audience numbers. They will receive credit for video […]

Back in 2012, before the words “safe environment” for digital video became industry mantra, a company called Outrigger Media launched OpenSlate. It was a tool to help advertisers target the long tail of video production. Among other things, the company knew “there would come a time in an industry that got hyper focused on audience […]

Finding the right context for traditional television commercials and creating platform-specific creative are challenges and opportunities for brands and their agencies. When it comes to the latter, being screen agnostic is a plus, according to NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino. “I think the creative agencies are wrestling with two things,” the media company’s Chairman of Advertising Sales […]

MTV certainly contributed a lot to 1980’s entertainment. For DEFY Media, one of the most valuable learnings was the “fast fail model.” So while DEFY’s programming resembles traditional programming in areas like writers and talent, where it “varies a bit” is in MTV’s concept that no idea is bad, CEO Matt Diamond says in this […]

When MTV Networks alumni Judy McGrath and Nick Shore formed Astronauts Wanted in 2013, they certainly understood younger audiences. What has become a joint venture between McGrath and Sony Music Entertainment has a broadly defined audience of 16 to 30 but its “sweet spot” tops out at 24. Astronauts Wanted’s three main formats are premium […]

Given a multitude of digital content, some authentic some less so, POPSUGAR has hitched the credibility of its enterprise to emotion. “We believe that consumers can tell the difference between a Facebook growth-hacking, click-baity type of experience from of what is in POPSUGAR premium emotional storytelling,” says Global Chief Revenue Officer Geoff Schiller. While emotional […]

Brand safety up, virtual reality down. To Ben Winkler, these are the two biggest changes year-over-year in the magnitude of discourse at the Digital Content NewFronts. “I haven’t seen a single presentation that didn’t begin, have a middle and end with brand safety,” says the Chief Investment Officer at OMD. “I’ve seen the biggest rise […]

If you’re between the ages of 13 and 34 and love sports but have a short attention span, Whistle Sports was created with you in mind. The global sports media company doesn’t do live sports per se but “everything else,” says Founder and CEO John West. “We provide content that we think is really authentic. […]

If anyone could discern a possible sea change in the formerly one-day event called the NewFront it would be Michael Kassan. The Chairman and CEO of strategic advisory and business development firm MediaLink witnessed its birthing by Digitas and has become an integral player as the event morphed over the years. And so it is […]

Lots of data and great creative for ad campaigns are meaningless unless you can be sure they’re actually driving revenue. Because at the end of the day, “It’s what the C-suite cares about,” says author and keynote speaker Andrew Davis. Davis was among some three dozen advertising and media experts who gathered for the recent […]