Pooja is a veteran of senior advanced TV roles at Viacom, Disney and as CEO of trueX until earlier this year.

For all of us, it’s been a challenging time during the pandemic: For Pooja it has been an especially  tumultuous year that included the sale of TrueX, a pregnancy, the birth of a second child, and joining Comcast in a senior role.

In this session, she speaks about her experiences as a woman of color. She shares her hopes for a more inclusive, bias-free workplace. She reflects on her own journey and tells what she is doing to help others.

Commenting on the current state of advanced TV, she talks about the importance of interoperability of viewer identity and the work that’s being done by Blockgraph and others.

And she shares her vision for FreeWheel and Effectv, both units of Comcast Advertising.

Thanks Pooja for a great conversation.  And congratulations on the new job!

Thanks to the BeetCast sponsor Mediaocean.

And thank you for listening.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Many in the industry with the scars from trying to make it happen would tell you a different story.

That is why, in the last two years, we have seen a series of initiatives and consortia aiming at harmonizing the spaghetti-like system of understanding and buying across a growing plethora of platforms.

Now another initiative, the TV Data Initiative, is launching, to tackle what it says is a “mess”.

New Initiative

In this discussion recorded for Beet.TV, the two people behind TV Data Initiative discuss what is happening:

• Jon Watts Executive Director, The Project X Institute
• Jonathan Steuer (former OMG chief research officer who has joined VideoAmp as EVP of TV strategy and currency)

In essence, the initiative is a thought leadership exercise that aims to help light the path to a more joined-up future.

Members include DISH Media, Blockgraph, TransUnion with TruOptik, MadHive, TVSquared, Eyeota and VideoAmp.

“Our plan is really to engage pretty wide in deeply with the industry over the months ahead and put together a really thoughtful diagnostic of the market,” says Watts.

“It’s going to be a big all-inclusive project, lots of engagement with the industry, lots of thoughtful research events and seminars.”

The Problem

So, why are the two Jons getting involved?

“Our research early on when we were piecing this together, suggested that it’s not working as well as it could do, and there’s huge opportunity to improve,” Watts says.

Steuer goes farther. “This is a mess,” he says.

• “There are many different data sets that can be used to enhance the impact of, of television, but they’re hard to get to, they’re hard to use, and they’re even in many ways hard for advertisers to understand.”
• “The ecosystem is very fragmented and poorly defined. There are tons of different inventory pools that are, in some cases, solved by multiple different providers, but the buy-side doesn’t necessarily understand that there’s no real independent auditing of data and no unified cross-platform measurement solution today.
• “(Data targeting) is still cumbersome and difficult and expensive … this is happening in a world where there are growing concerns about consumer privacy and security and changes to the data landscape.”

The Solution

The pair aim to help by conducting research, holding talks, seminars and workshops, Watts says:

• “(We will provide a) really clear overview of the landscape to look at the different relationships between the different participants in the ecosystem.”
• “We’re particularly going to look at the use cases, the data, and unpack what needs to happen from a workflow point of view to execute around those.”
• “We’re going to have to assess some of the barriers and blockages and look at the scope for collective action to address and unpack those.”

“Hopefully by the summer, we’ll have a really useful thoughtful piece of work that can really help industry to move forward.”

This could lead to a reversal of the limited success we’ve experienced around gender equality, she says, citing a study by the United Nations on the impact of COVID-19 on women.

“Yet we know, that when women are in power, societies flourish. And when societies flourish, economies flourish, which is good not only for societies but for businesses.”

Media plays a pivotal role: media drives societal changes in culture, says Karp McHugh in this interview about SeeHer’s recent partnership with Getty Images.

Together, SeeHer and Getty have “released guidelines on how marketers can use inclusive imagery to achieve diversity in their advertising amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in which advertisers are reviewing and changing their messaging,” per their press release.

The guide, “Inclusive Visual Storytelling for Women, ” is the most recent addition to SeeHer’s marketing essentials toolkit.

The accompanying video explores the rise of CTV and whether it’s growing at the expense of traditional linear television. It’s the ninth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 9.

CTV is a catch-all phrase that encompasses built-in Smart TV interfaces, stand-alone streaming devices (e.g., Roku and Chromecast), connected video game systems and Blu-ray players. 

Forty percent of adults in U.S. TV households are now watching video on a TV set via a connected device daily, compared to only 1% in 2010. Meanwhile, eMarketer estimates that advertising spend for CTV will top $10 billion in 2021, while traditional TV is expected to decline by anywhere from $10 billion to $12 billion during the first half of 2020 due to COVID. 

Time spent on traditional TV is clearly shifting to CTV (and this trend has probably accelerated during the pandemic), but what does it mean for advertising? Will every dollar lost in traditional TV ad spend be gained by CTV as the eMarketer data suggests? 

It’s not a simple answer, and that’s because a TV dollar isn’t the same as a CTV dollar. CTV distributors’ unwillingness to overload their viewers with commercials is one reason for that. 

Several distributors with the largest audiences have gone to market with guarantees of keeping ad loads down. For example, Roku platform GM Scott Rosenberg told AdExchanger that ad load is kept to eight minutes per streaming hour—less than half that of linear television—in the service of a better user experience. 

When comparing apples to apples, there are probably fewer :30 ad units for sale in an hour of ad-supported streaming content than in an hour of linear TV as a result. 

Because of its powerful targeting capabilities, I believe CTV is most valuable as a reach extension for linear TV in the short run—for national brands and local advertisers that buy cable and local broadcast alike. This is especially true in the COVID era, when advertisers will need to target messages based on how effectively a region has contained the spread of coronavirus and how “open” or “closed” it is as a result.

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is the final installment of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series. You can find all previous episodes below or here on Beet.TV.

The accompanying video explores how “panic porn” came to dominate the TV airwaves and why viewers are burned out, as well as how brands will need to reinvent themselves to show they’re purpose-driven. It’s the eighth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 8.

Research published in August 2019 by students from Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and the Indian Institute of Technology found that TV news networks consistently publish negative headlines, while print and radio skew positive or neutral. Not surprisingly, the more negative the headline, the more likely it is to be shared on social. 

“Panic porn” works; it gets attention, evokes reactions, and ultimately results in more revenue for TV news programmers. But viewers eventually grow fatigued of hearing that the sky is falling, and we’re seeing that play out now. 

The time has come for us to take responsibility as an industry for the role we play in perpetuating fear, hate and division in our nation. There will short-term negative consequences, but the long-term costs will be much greater if we don’t leverage our power to help bridge the division in our country. We must use the power and platforms we have, and our media dollars in particular, to embrace hope and love. 

Advertisers are going to have to re-introduce their brands in a new context, which Colleen DeCourcy, co-president and chief creative officer of Wieden+Kennedy, explained in a recent Fast Company interview: 

“What I think the optimistic part of [the COVID-19 era] is, the longer it goes on, the more people’s minds are going to be wiped of brand preference in many instances. That specific brand of toothpaste is going to matter to me less than just toothpaste. I think when people start to step outside again, brands will be re-proving themselves, re-introducing themselves, restating why they should be a preference.”

Brands will also have to find their purpose and convey it in a way that is real and relatable. Recent research from Porter Novelli showed that 77% of Americans believe companies must prove they’re making decisions in the national interest. The data was released before nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism began, which I suspect would have driven this percentage even further upward. 

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 8:
Why the Media Industry Must Shake its Addiction to ‘Panic Porn’
June 3, 2020

Session 9:
Is CTV Siphoning Off Dollars from Linear? It’s Complicated
June 10, 2020

The best practices underpinning portfolio optimization for media and financial services are fundamentally similar, and finance principles can be instructive for TV networks and distributors.

Investors don’t make the most money or manage risk by focusing on only one asset class, to the exclusion of all others. Instead, they try to maximize the entire portfolio—finding the right asset class mix and allocation to deliver the highest risk-adjusted return. Similarly, every media seller’s obsession is (or should be) with packaging and pricing inventory in a way that maximizes their yield, or the total revenue available from their entire pool of inventory.  

Many seller organizations are currently siloed, with teams solely dedicated to linear, digital or specific ad products, which can be highly counterproductive. For a seller organization’s portfolio optimization strategy to succeed, teams and individuals need to be incentivized to work toward the same revenue goals that have been set at the organizational level. 

Sellers also need to introduce quantitative metrics that their entire organization, from account executives and ad traffickers to senior leadership, can tap into quickly to understand the progress being made toward portfolio optimization. I would recommend introducing a KPI like inventory efficiency to measure the efficiency of every dollar spent by your top 20 advertisers. The ultimate goal is for teams and individuals to focus less on the revenue secured and more on revenue that’s been left on the table.

To learn more about the principles that TV sellers need to live by to make their portfolio optimization strategies a success, click here.

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

The accompanying video unpacks why buyers are hungry for addressable, why supply is so constrained and the potential risks for sellers of over-indexing on this one type of inventory. It’s the sixth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 6:

Slowly but surely, the TV industry is making headway toward more audience-based ad selling and buying. Operators are priming the pump to enable more advertising inventory to be addressable and for more households to receive such ads. Programming networks have had success in recent years in enabling and selling dynamic advertising on free video-on-demand (VOD). And addressable advertising at a national scale—to be offered by broadcasters and cable networks, not only distributors—is once again on the agenda.

And yet addressable TV inventory is still highly constrained. At present, demand far outpaces supply of inventory and content suitable to reach hyper-specific audiences. The reason for that largely comes down to infrastructure. 

There are approximately 64 million U.S. households that have the hardware (i.e., a modern set-top box) to receive addressable ads. Those ads are delivered by cable and satellite operators, such as Comcast and Cox Communications, which have the data and technology to enable household-level targeting. (They can also let advertisers blind-match their first-party data against their own PII data to reach existing customers and prospects.) But those distributors only have two minutes of ad time per hour per channel available for any form of advertising—linear or addressable—and each operator can reach only their subscribers. 

The bottom line is that the audience available to advertisers using this fragmented “local” addressable is rather limited and generally not interesting to national brands, such as Coke and Pepsi, which view TV as a vehicle for mass reach to consumers who reside everywhere. 

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Tune in here Wednesdays at 1pm ET

The accompanying video unpacks how sellers of linear TV advertising should adapt their inventory management, pricing and data practices in response to the COVID-19 crisis. It’s the fifth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 5:

Here are three universal truths of linear TV advertising sales:

1. One of the largest causes of revenue leakage is price variability.

2. Sellers have tended to be overly reliant on live sports and other high-value programming, resulting in high operational costs and inefficient inventory utilization.

3. Data isn’t readily accessible to make real-time pricing, revenue and inventory management decisions.

Our industry, like most, is in the middle of a crisis, and the response thus far has been steeped in traditional thinking. We’ve seen linear TV sellers discount spot prices to drive volume and introduce shiny new objects (i.e., new ad products) to attract incremental revenue. This is in lieu of doing the more difficult but profitable work of implementing data-driven pricing and inventory management practices.

For starters, if you haven’t redone your rate card across your organization’s portfolio of linear, spot-sold inventory during the lockdown period, you’re leaving money on the table. And now that live sports and other high-value programming are gone for an extended period, sellers need to redefine premium inventory.

To minimize revenue leakage due to pricing variability, sellers also need to implement pricing controls to ensure that inventory is sold for its correct value. This is especially important now that the value of some inventory has sharply increased due to constrained supply and less competition for viewers.

To learn more about how pricing controls can prevent revenue leakage in the era of COVID-19, click here.

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 4: Why the TV Advertising Industry Will Embrace Consolidated Measurement

The associated video provides an overview of traditional TV systems and workflows, job functions in TV buying and selling, and ruminations on the future of TV advertising. It’s the fourth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Here’s a sampling of Part 4:

Here are three seismic changes that are on the horizon for the TV advertising business:

1. Adoption of a standard for consolidated measurement. As digital metrics have pervaded—and complicated—the TV landscape, calls for simplification have grown more acute. Over time, we should expect to see a more whole-hearted embrace of the CPM, gradually phasing out the GRP, CPV, CPP and a host of others. It simply doesn’t make sense to sell using other currencies and then back into a CPM for reporting purposes, which is happening today.

2. Rise of performance-based buying metrics. Brands and agencies are eager for TV-buying metrics that are closer to what they’ve come to expect from digital, but this is still a future prospect for TV and online video. Specifically, cost-per-visit is highly aspirational. It would entail people seeing a commercial on their smart TVs, which are associated with their phones via the device graph; then, the phones would be “seen” inside a Target or Walmart using Beacon technology or via Wireless/Bluetooth IP signals to close the loop and link ad views to store visits.

3. Unlocking the potential of unduplicated reach. The ability to parse the noise of multiple ad exposures across devices to gauge a campaign’s true reach would be incredibly powerful. It’s still aspirational; privacy considerations make it extremely difficult to enable. But it’s effectively the holy grail of targeting.

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 3: Why True Cross-Platform Measurement Is Still Elusive

A decade ago, the Gross Rating Point (GRP) was still the unchallenged king of TV-buying metrics, but advertisers are no longer satisfied with metrics that only tell a story about reach. They want to buy TV the way they buy digital and measure ROI in terms of sales and conversions, but that’s still largely aspirational.

Another challenge publishers and advertisers are still trying to crack is figuring out how many individuals are really exposed to content — or ads — in the context of viewing behavior that’s spread over multiple devices per household.

New technologies have given rise to increasingly sophisticated targeting using demographic and psychographic attributes. But most TV is still measured using probabilistic modeling, a methodology for mapping devices to audience segments that relies on consumer panels assembled by Nielsen, Comscore and other data providers. It can tell advertisers that the audience viewing their ad is probably heavily comprised of working mothers in their forties in the Midwest or men in their twenties in large cities, for example.

Statistical modeling and predictive algorithms, which are populated via device fingerprinting, IP matching, location data and other information, can now be used to narrow down an audience.

Meanwhile, in the domain of online video, a lack of standards for delivery and measurement has created confusion in the marketplace and imposed challenges on advertisers, which may have the effect of curtailing spend. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has made an effort to impose standards, but they’re still a work in progress.

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 2: How New Audience Behaviors, Data and Technology are Changing TV & Video Advertising

Ten years ago, If you wanted to get TV programming onto your screen, your options were pretty limited. You would call your local cable or satellite provider to install a set-top box and figure out how large of a bundle you were willing to pay for. Now the options have proliferated, and 71% of internet users use an OTT service at least once a month, according to VAB. This change in how audiences watch TV has changed how programmers and distributors of TV monetize it. Digital advertising technology is being used more and more in the business of TV, to enable greater targeting and to enable the creation of marketplaces to aggregate inventory and maximize reach for advertisers.

In the past decade, what it means to “watch TV” has been totally redefined. The paradigm of sitting down to watch a show at the time it airs is fading fast — with the exception of sports and other tentpole events, like the “Game of Thrones” finale. Now we watch TV whenever we want to across our connected devices, provided we have a good internet connection. This viewing is enabled through a variety of ad and non-ad supported commercial models, creating a challenge for traditional programmers and broadcasters.

This shift of viewing to digital platforms has resulted in significant growth in online video advertising and resulted in a whole new suite of video ad products to the market, while the lion’s share of linear TV continues to be packaged and
sold in the traditional way—upfront and scatter buys of :30 second spots. This contrast, and the erosion of traditional TV audiences (COVID crisis excluded) means that TV sellers are constantly looking for ways to borrow from digital to create new and innovative products for advertisers with greater ROI and resonance to audiences. Ad format or the time of a video ad unit and ad load are two levers with which sellers have been experimenting to compete with pure play digital distributors and programmers.

Weekly Schedule:*

Session 1:
“TV: Broadcast and Cable”: An overview and history
April 8, 2020

Session 2:
Commercial Models for TV & Video; Ad Load; Rise of Digital Video; Video Advertising Products; Data Driven TV Products
April 15, 2020

Session 3:
Ad Targeting; Ad Tech Stack; Currencies of Measurement & Sale; Digital Standards
April 22, 2020

Session 4:
Traditional TV Systems & Workflows; Jobs, Roles & Functions in TV Buying & Selling; Future of TV Advertising
April 29. 2020

Session 5:
Economics of TV: the role inventory management pricing play in portfolio optimization for sellers
May 6, 2020

(*subject to change)

In January 2018, Tru Optik, a technology vendor that offers a data management platform for over-the-top (OTT) TV advertisers, launched OptOut.TV, giving consumers a one-click way to refuse audience-based targeting of over-the-top TV ads.

Next up, a reboot is coming.

“We launched our optout.tv more than two years ago,” says CEO Andre Swanston. “It’s been white-labelled by a lot of the largest ad tech platforms to power their ability for opt-outs across connected TV advertising.

“In the coming weeks, we’re branding that as privacy.tv and adding on an additional suite of transparency and privacy capabilities for publishers and consumers, very importantly as well.”

Centralized privacy dashboards allowing consumers to control or opt out of ad targeting from certain companies include YourOnlineChoices, the related AboutAds.info/WebChoices from the Digital Advertising Alliance, plus the National Advertising Initiative’s opt-out feature.

Consumers can also use individual services’ privacy controls to opt out.

Swanston thinks privacy control will be important in the connected TV era, because privacy informs brand safety.

“No-one wants to have their brand going in front of ISIS or Al Qaeda video,” he says. “When we think about a premium television, it’s less about the content and more about privacy compliance or how data is used, what data is used, and making sure that those are in line with how our brand portrays itself.”

He wants Tru Optik’s dashboard to get out ahead of ad privacy legislation on dockets in California and elsewhere.

“Now it’s not just California,” Swanston says. “There’s seven to 10 other states that have things either on the ballot or are pushing other initiatives that would change the way data can be used.

“Most of these laws are pretty poorly written or relatively ambiguous, I think, so there’s been a lot of uncertainty around the industry about how to prepare for them.

“We don’t really wait for whether it’s a legal regulation or if it’s something like the IAB to put out standards.”

Tru Optik’s technology helps marketers with targeting OTT viewers, measuring consumption and tracking attribution using first- and third-party data.

This video is from a series leading up to, and covering, the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara.  This Beet.TV series is sponsored by Xandr.   Please visit this page to find more videos from the series. 

But, maybe also, a playbook for making a better world.

A group called the CMO Growth Council was formed back in 2018 to share best practice amongst chief marketing officers. More than 200 of them gathered in Orlando in November to debate. And 250 of them are meeting again during this week’s Cannes Lions.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, CMO Growth Council chair Marc Pritchard, who is P&G’s chief brand officer, lays out three priorities through which brands can be “a force for good and a force for growth in the world”…

• Equality and inclusion: “If we could get more equality … we could really lift boats in terms of creating growth. Our core priority is expanding SeeHer to get accurate representation of women and girls (in advertising), and expanding Free the Bid so we get representation behind the camera.”
• Environmental sustainability: “We just launched #BrandsForGood, a group of companies coming together to be able to use brands to be able to promote sustainable lifestyles, sustainable behaviors, and sustainable solutions.”
• Responsible media: “We’ll be announcing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media so we can assure that we can have an internet, an online, that is free of hate, full of civility and safety for both consumers and for brands.

You are watching Beet.TV coverage of the CMO Growth Council Summit in Cannes.  This series is presented by Teads.   For more videos form our series, visit this page.   Please find all our coverage from Cannes 2019, right here.  

“Increasingly over time, this is really where the advertising industry, technology industry surrounding advertising brands and media are coming together,” says Howard Homonoff, SVP at MediaLink.

Part of their challenge is creating these different types of relationships with agencies, brands and technology companies, he says.

This video was recorded at Cannes Lions 2016. For more segments from our coverage of Cannes Lions, please visit this page.

While user-generated content has driven audiences, it’s also created concern on the part of traditional television. But,  Spangenberg says, traditional TV is once again at the forefront of providing a platform for storytellers and connecting to mass audiences quickly.

“But the whole definition of television has to expand beyond that because we still associate it with a box on a wall and that’s really not what television is all about today.”

Adhering to this line of thinking, HPE has committed to a research project called The Machine – Hewlett Packard Labs’ biggest project.

“We have committed to this very important piece of research,” Palmer says. “It’s looking at fundamentally how we transform the very basic core computing architecture.”

The goal is to reduce energy consumption and increase performance, she says.

“We’re talking about energy saving around 99 percent of what is achievable today.”

This video was produced at the OMD Oasis at Cannes Lions 2016 as part of  the Future of TV Advertising Leadership Forum, a series presented by true[X] and hosted by OMD Worldwide.  Please visit this page for additional segments.

“Wasn’t it an easier time when you could have one superstar, three networks and some TV and print, and you had the nation covered? Of course, that is not the case anymore.”

Despite the increasing complexity of the consumer landscape – the development of microtargeting, consumer subgroups and the like – music is still a perfect marketing companion, he says.

While targeting consumers with many different types of music is challenging, Stubbs says this is their next great journey.

This video was produced at the OMD Oasis at Cannes Lions 2016 as part of  the Future of TV Advertising Leadership Forum, a series presented by true[X] and hosted by OMD Worldwide.  Please visit this page for additional segments.

Goop, which Paltrow said she thought up long before it became a brand, launched in 2008 as a weekly online newsletter and has since grown to an LA-based company with around 50 employees – the majority of whom are women, she said.

“It’s had a long gestational period, really,” she said. “It sort of dictated over time what it is. I think the values of the brand were always intrinsic to me.”

The company, which Paltrow calls a “contextual commerce business” has evolved into a lifestyle and e-commerce site.

“If you’re really staying true to who you are and your vision, I think it does put good energy into the world.”

The panel was held at the OMD Oasis at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and moderated by JD Heyman, deputy editor of entertainment at People.

Editor’s Note: During Cannes Lions, Beet.TV’s production will be based at the OMD Oasis.  Many thanks to them for their kind hospitality.

“It feels like the business, certainly our business, and probably the whole industry, is obviously a year older but definitely a year wiser – and I think maybe a year braver,” he says.

At DMEXCO, SMG will be discussing the marriage of technology and content as well as how to bridge the gap between technology and brands – topics that reflect the business’s direction, particularly around precision marketing.

This interview is part of a series of videos leading up to the DMEXCO conference in Cologne. The series is presented by 4C Insights + Teletrax.

“The starting point is the client and the client brief, and we just want to meet as many startups as possible who can answer them,” he says.

Currently, there are about 100 startups on the NTN directory.

“We’ve got our own media village here, and DMEXCO will be an opportunity to actually get to know some new startups, to get to bring them into our camp,” Kite says.

This interview is part of a series of videos leading up to the DMEXCO conference in Cologne. The series is presented by 4C Insights + Teletrax.

“Today I come here, and it’s so inspiring because you literally can do anything,” says Doria, who has been coming to the festival for 12 years.

“Possibilities now are incredible because you can really live what’s going on in film through your life at home,” Doria said while speaking about a friend’s mobile application that allows users to purchase items in movies and TV shows, while the user is watching them in real time. “That’s a fantastic thing to be able to play with.”

We interviewed Doria at the Cannes Lions Festival as part of a series on video advertising presented by AT&T AdWorks. Please visit this page for more videos from the series.

Earlier this year, as part of these efforts, J. Walter Thompson Company introduced Mirum, a global technology and innovation company, as a “complement to J. Walter Thompson Worldwide.”

“What Mirum is bringing to the table is a deeper technology expertise, in terms of platforms and helping clients navigate what technology means for their business.”

We interviewed Tick at the Cannes Lions Festival as part of a series on video advertising presented by AT&T AdWorks. Please visit this page for more videos from the series.

Tilds’ four tips for keeping up are to be a student of technology; to maintain a consistent framework for learning about new technologies; to understand what you already have so you know what you need; and to create space.

A good example of this, Tilds says, is Snapchat’s billboard over the Palais, which could hardly be missed by this year’s festival-goers.

Last year, Snapchat had one business development person at Cannes, Tilds says.

“Being in the right place, making space, having conversations, being open to conversations, knowing what you have and know what you’re looking for helps you[…] Knowing how to find the right clients who are ready in your organization to take advantage of those things gets you to the place where it’s not a surprise [Snapchat] is on the billboard of the Palais because you were there at the first moment.”

We interviewed Tilds at the Cannes Lions Festival as part of a series on video advertising presented by Teads. Please visit this page for more videos from the series.

“We talk about making our dollars work harder and work smarter, and viewability really is brought to the forefront,” she says.

Marketers not only want their ads delivered to the right audience but also want to make sure those ads are actually being seen.

“They want top of the page. They want premium inventory.”

We interviewed Kienast last week at the Teads Outstream conference in New York.

“We think there’s tremendous opportunity for more creative, more targeted creative,” she says. “We can really get granular with all of the targeting.”

Digital and data, because they’ve become such powerful assets for understanding consumers, are now moving to the front of the conversation.

We interviewed Reed last week at the Teads Outstream conference in New York.