PureWow recently raised $2.5 million in seed funding from a group of prestige investors that includes venture firms Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group, Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerRSE, Great Oaks Venture Capital as well as Whoopi Goldberg. “They took notice that we were on the forefront of this intersection between branded content and native ads,” Harwood tells us. The funding will help to scale PureWow across video, mobile, social, email, and will also be used to expand into new verticals and to invest in product and marketing.  Using more data is also critical. “We are hiring data scientists so we can make swift decisions,” he says.

Video advertisers have included Cartier, Silk Milk and L’Oreal.

For more insight into the mission and focus of the company, as well as the raison d’être for starting up, check out this video interview.

Harwood and the PureWow team will host a reception for Beet.TV’s Media Revolutionaries series at Cannes Lions along with Microsoft and Xaxis.

We interviewed Harwood as part of the series The Road to Cannes, our lead-up to the Cannes Lions Festival presented by Coull. Please visit this page for additional segments.

The increasing importance of data plays a key role in the brand transformation that Razorfish is focused on with clients. “We view the next opportunity around transformation as massively customized experiences,” he says, and targeted data from a range of sources enables those innovative experiences. The role of ecommerce is also rising in importance as the so-called “front door to the brand,” he says. Many brands are building more functionality and ecommerce opportunities that link online marketing to online buying.

We interviewed Denton as part of the series The Road to Cannes, our lead-up to the Cannes Lions Festival presented by Coull.  Please visit this page for additional segments.

“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 the middle of the afternoon, Guardian content is going great guns on Facebook – (users) are looking for a bit more light and shade.

“In the evening, tablets start really coming in to their own as people want long-form journalism, analysis and context about all the stuff they’ve read throughout the day.”

In the Wall Street Journal today, Jack Marshall reports on the numbers of data and programmatic advertising companies who are here in droves.  Here’s another report by Alex Kantrowitz in Advertising Age.

Having events on rooftops and cabanas and hotel suites, next year many of these players will be part of the program in the Grand Palais.

Speaking of gatherings of companies involved with data and media decisioning, we are producing our event on Tuesday here in Cannes presented by Simulmedia and Videology.

“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 costs is really important – but (advertisers will ask) ‘what are we actually getting?’ Before, they would test (campaign performance) assumed (any failure) was a creative issue. We’ll see a swing back toward transparency.”

We spoke with him as part of our series, “The Road to Cannes.”

“We’ve had an explosion of formats,” says Maxus’ north America chief strategy office Mark Egan

We’re seeing a lot of this roll in to a common unit which is represented in the stream format that you see in Facebook on mobile, a lot of what Yahoo is basing their new mobile product on – and is fixated around image-based messaging along with a little bit of text.

“That’s really exciting. Things are beginning to coalesce and make themselves more available, more digestible, more palatable for mobile-first consumers.”

We spoke with him as part of our series, “The Road to Cannes.”

“We should no longer think in ‘channels’ anymore – we think in connectivity and user experience,” according to ZenithOptimedia north America corporate development EVP James Shoreland.

Shoreland is working on breaking down silos between technology, data, brands and content: “This is the very best time to be in our industry. I love putting our clients and their budgets together with technology companies to work out how they can create genuine value exchanges for their customers. Technology can be used together with paid, earned and owned media to bring that to life.”

We spoke with him as part of our series, “The Road to Cannes.”

We spoke with him about trends to watch the upcoming Cannes Lions Festival.  This video is part of a series titled  “The Road to Cannes.”

We spoke with him as part of our series, “The Road to Cannes.”

We spoke with Morgan last week about Cannes as part of our preview series titled “The Road to Cannes.”

Beet Partners with Simulmedia for Cannes Coverage

We are very pleased that Simulmedia is the presenting sponsor of Beet.TV coverage of Cannes Lions 2014.   As part of this association, we will be producing a summit with Simulmedia and Videology on the future of television advertising on Tuesday, June 17 at the Videology Cabana on Le Croisette.    Here is a list of the panelists and moderator.

*Marco Bertozzi, President, Audience on Demand, EMEA & N.A., VivaKi

*Tom Bowman, SVP Sales Operations and Commercial Production, BBC Worldwide

*Scott Ferber, Chairman & CEO, Videology

*Steve Hasker, President, Nielsen Global Product Leadership

*Terence Kawaja, CEO Luma Partners (moderator)

*Dave Morgan, CEO & Founder, Simulmedia

*Yin Woon Rani, VP of Integrated Marketing, Campbell Soup Company

While digital venues are playing a large role in health care marketing, health care marketing comes with its own set of challenges, both in reaching physicians and consumers. That’s why Cannes Lions launched Lions Health, a two-day festival that focuses on health care communications. “Health care is evolving at a rapid rate and so is health care communications. Digital will play a greater role,” he says.

We spoke with Rogers as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

Advertisers can benefit most from frameworks and structure around innovation to help drive it forward. Automation goes hand in hand with innovation and helps reduce friction in buying and selling of media. New technology to watch includes wearable tech, augmented reality and automatic content recognition, Tilds says.

We spoke with Tilds as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

“It’s a combination of engagement and exposure,” he adds. “It’s not just a big punch, but a lot of messages adding up over time.” The sheer volume of advertising puts pressure on marketers to be consistent in voice and tone across all those messages. But once a marketer captures a consumer’s attention, there is a greater chance of connecting with them because of amplification tools, like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, he says. “How can you create noise in front [of a message],” he says adding that digital channels allow for that broader reach.

We spoke with Reardon as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

This trend is playing out within Europe in Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries there, as well in Australia, Japan, and more. “We see marketers are very comfortable having programmatic relationships, but we are seeing less willingness to put those same impressions into an open exchange environment,” he says. Another trend in programmatic buying is cross-screen buying. More brands are planning their media across devices from PCs to tablets to mobile phones.

In related news, Videology released a study this week finding that most advertisers buy online video ads in the same way they buy TV, relying on a fixed CPM model. Even with programmatic, many marketers still prefer the more familiar ways of buying, with 91% of advertisers buying programmatic video ads on a guaranteed CPM basis in the first quarter, Videology’s report found.

We spoke with Jamboretz as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

Open-source platforms are part of the tech changes driving the ad business. In fact, the way products are marketed today are impacted most by factors including technology, data, behavior and personalization.

“Technology is changing how we shop, how we communicate, how we drive…that leads to behavior changes…There is also a co-dependence between behavior and technology and that has led to unprecedented amounts of data. Every media owner is focused on data…which lets us personalize our communications and content,” he says, adding that media agencies then need to organize themselves internally to align with all these changes. Fremont joined MEC last year and is tasked with overseeing digital platforms, mobile and online video on a global basis.

We spoke with Fremont as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

For starters, Mindshare introduced “The Loop” earlier this year. That’s a proprietary operating system that draws in data from more than 100 sources in real time to help the agency understand how to respond rapidly to the market. It also includes a physical space with multiple screens at the agency showcasing that data. In addition, the agency relies on “planning for agility workshops” that connect various stakeholders across a brand to help them respond to the market. As they “plan to be agile,” marketers need to have as many tools and assets available in real time, and that includes video, she says.

Finally, flexible budgets are helpful because they enable marketers to activate quickly across paid, earned and owned media. “Forethought is more important than ever before. There are so many things we can be ready for and ready to activate…if you can mechanize the process for a brand [about] what their adaptive marketing strategy is going to be then the ability to deploy at scale is the easy part.” As a recent example, the Huggies brand recently donated diapers to lower-income families for tweets supporting the Mets player Daniel Murphy’s paternity leave. The marketer’s response grew out of understanding real-time consumer behavior to the news about the baseball player.

We spoke with Gustafson as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

That’s why it’s important to design content with the social dynamics in mind from the get-go, he says. “Does it go on Facebook? On YouTube? What is the right channel? How will it get shared? What is the purpose?” he says, detailing questions for advertisers to keep front and center in the creative process.

Caer says Wonderman’s focus with digital video is to bring “purposeful content” to the marketplace. That varies by client, but it’s an important notion to focus on when developing the material, he says. Wunderman clients include Schick and a campaign promoting awareness of men’s health, Levi’s and a video project on conversing water, and Jaago Foundation on building schools, among many others.

We spoke with Caer as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

She also speaks about the needs of brands in a super kinetic the media landscape.  And, she speaks about the transformation of the upcoming Cannes Lions Festival which where MediaLink will be active with a number of informational seminars and other events.

Millard joined MediaLink in 2009 from Martha Stewart Ominedia where she was co-CEO

We spoke with her as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over two weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

“We’ve rolled it out in the US and will roll it out in 2014 in many other markets around the world,” says Olivier Gers, global president of LiquidThread, another SMG initiative combining three SMG content-creating units.

“We have relationships with 20+ publishers in the US and South America, and we’ll establish more relationships in other markets as well – to establish the best of evergreen content and push that content within paid display in other markets.”

We spoke with Gers as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

“‘Big data’ sounds scary … things are very complex at the moment,” says Starcom MediaVest Group London’s co-CEO Steve Parker. “(It’s) really insight … if you keep it really simple, you will move forward quicker and more intelligently.”

For SMG, using Big Data principles has allowed it to move cider brand Bulmers to number one in the category, by deeply understanding consumers’ Friday-night behaviors, Parker says.

He says clients “want to be braver” but “they’re under more pressure, not less”: “We have to get better and more collaborative around how we tell a single story for our clients.”

We spoke with Parker as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

“This year, when we report our results in July, we’ll say that, for the second year in succession, the growth in digital has exceeded the very small decline in print,” Nick Hewat tells Beet.TV.

Two thirds of The Guardian’s revenue comes from print, but the publisher is busy trying to get ad revenue from its US and Australia operations, plus from new technologies and formats everywhere.

“We want more video inventory,” Hewat adds. “It’s the only thing in media where there is a demand for more supply.”

We spoke with him as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over the next four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

“Some of the great stuff being done today either talks about the human condition … and the other thing is humor … and then there’s product demo,” Darin Brown tells Beet.TV. “We’re going to go to Cannes – that’s not the stuff we really talk a lot about (in the industry).”

Brown lauds the potential of product demo videos, helping inform customers making product purchase decisions, then clicking on to retail sites to buy those products.

“Brand advertisers that were disintermediated (by online) … those guys have started to come online (but) have just applied TV advertising to the web – that’s a good start but there’s so much more to do with it.”

We spoke with him as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over the next four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

“What’s interesting is the possibilities within IPTV,” he tells Beet.TV. “Forty percent of televisions in the US are now connected to the internet. All the things that we’re doing in the online world … are laying the groundwork for what’s going to happen with addressable TV and IPTV in the future.”

We spoke with Johnston as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes”, a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series is being published over four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

“Senior executives – do they look at their mobile phones all the time? The answer is ‘yes’,” says Tom Bowman, VP Global Strategy & Sales Operations, BBC Worldwide.

“Amongst affluent consumers groups, the mobile device turns out to be the device which is strongest at changing position of brand favourability. If you had an absolutely brand new mobile device, you are twice as likely to be impacted than if you just had an old smartphone.”

On his way to the the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Bowman says: “The creative possibility of technology are getting better. There’s a whole lot of companies coming to Cannes to engage with agencies in a way they hadn’t before.”

We spoke with Stark as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over the next four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.

As digital grows, context is key and marketers need to look at where consumers are when an ad runs, such as whether they are at home or on the go. As digital video grows, so will native ads, she adds. “With native formats, there is content integration, product placement. Those are things we are already doing through Liquid Thread,” she says, referring to the digital branded entertainment division of the agency.

We spoke with Stark as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over the next four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.