She wants to “shine a light on the need for the industry to reach out beyond legacy metrics so we can promise our clients, the national marketers, an improvement to their business.”

This was a big theme in NBC’s TV Upfront last week.

In this interview with Beet.TV at the annual Digital Media Summit of LUMA Partners, Yaccarino talks about what advertisers have been waiting for, the value of parent Comcast’s set-top box data and the company’s newly expanded relationship with Snapchat in the form of a daily news show on the social platform.

While no one argues the value of premium content and its impact on an advertising campaign, “How great would it be for us to be able to transact on a currency that reflects their outcomes to improve their business,” says Yaccarino, who is Chairman of Advertising Sales & Client Partnerships for NBCU.

She dismisses traditional ratings like C3 and C7 as “an approximate number of who may or may not have watched out show that we have to wait three weeks to get.” Lacking better metrics, marketers have lacked “the data they craved or were promised form the digital platforms combined with the scale of premium content.”

She cites NBCU’s audience tools and studio, largely powered by data from parent Comcast’s set-top boxes, as providing insights that can be married together with consumer data “to have a good prediction” of advertisers’ business outcomes.

As ADWEEK reports, NBCU just announced that NBC News will produce Snapchat’s first daily news show. Yaccarino says what started out as a “very modest relationship” with the social platform for the Rio Olympics “changes every single day.”

This segment is part of a series leading up to the 2017 TV Upfront. It is presented by FreeWheel. To find more videos from the series, please visit this page.

Now the company produces about nine videos each day “so we’re not a publisher that waits around for the NewFronts to bring out new shows,” says POPSUGAR President David Grant. “Content development and creation goes on all year long.”

From the style of storytelling to technical improvements like optimization for platforms, much has changed in the way publishers try to engage with audiences, Grant says in this interview with Beet.TV during the Digital Content NewFronts.

“We started with the idea that if we made regular weekly series with experts that people could recognize on camera and come to trust, that it would help our brand and build that connection,” says Grant.

What’s become clear along the way is that POPSUGAR’s value and “heart” lies in being a brand that stands for positivity and inspiration. “It’s giving us license to try a lot of new things,” he adds.

Newly formed POPSUGAR Films is developing a feature film titled Honored with Lionsgate, Untitled Entertainment and Cinestar Pictures and executive producer Zoe Saldana starring digital influencer Meghan Rienks, as ADWEEK reports.

POPSUGAR’s investment in native television production company Toy Rocket has already “brought three or four projects to us,” says Grant.

“We’re just branching out into all the different things and video content areas that a brand can go and our audience is giving us permission to do that.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.

“The big picture for us is really moving toward the big screen, no matter what that big screen is,” says Newsy GM Blake Sabatinelli. “Really giving people that ten-foot screen and saying, ‘lean back, watch the news and learn something and get a better understanding of the world around you.’ That’s our big goal.”

Nearing its ninth anniversary, Newsy knows it needs to gain a deep foothold with over-the-top viewers “because that’s where the industry is heading and you’ll have huge amounts of penetration in the next five to seven years,” Sabatinelli says in this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts.

Newsy just announced three new series, a new two-hour, live news show, several new advertising deals and a new partnership with Tru Optik for advertiser performance guarantees, as ADWEEK reports.

Last year the company owned by The E.W. Scripps Company branched out beyond OTT by cutting its first cable channel deal with Cincinnati Bell. Newsy was one of the first digital natives on the Sling TV platform. “They were looking if there was an opportunity to do something that could supplement a CNN or disrupt a CNN, and we were looking to see if we could do something that could supplement cable news or disrupt something like a headline news,” says Sabatinelli.

Looking solely within the digital space, Sabatinelli sees it “flooded with news competitors,” but in the OTT space “it’s really us, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. That’s really it.”

Having run the company for the past 18 months, Sabatinelli describes his tenure to date as “an incredibly crazy ride.” Newsy has gone from 34 people to “ninety something” this year, plans to open a West Coast bureau and hasn’t ruled out going international.

“We describe ourselves as the better alternative. If you want to watch what people have been doing for the past 50 years, you have plenty of options,” Sabatinelli says.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.

It’s a gathering where agencies and their clients size up trends in consumer technology, content consumption and distribution to “help tell stories together on those platforms or through those vessels or through things that maybe haven’t peaked yet,” says Adam Shlachter, President of Global Innovation at Publicis Media.

The ability to bring all of these fully or partially formed elements together for collaborative building is a far cry from other events described by Shlachter a “showcase of reels and demos and sneak peeks of things that may or may come to light.”

With so much to cover during the annual Digital Content NewFronts presentations, he’s looking for what’s actionable, most impactful and will help marketers transform their business and brands.

This can happen through new platforms, new partners or “new voices” to help tell marketers’ stories and connect with consumers “in new and better and more defined ways,” Shlachter says.

Also maturing a bit is Snapchat, along with its audience, according to Shlachter. Snapchat most recently revealed a deal with Moat to be able to provide a viewability score for its advertisers, as ADWEEK reports.

“There’s no shortage of content,” he says. What’s key is to understand how it works more seamlessly between platforms “because content doesn’t exist on just any one place anymore.”

We interviewed him at the Digitas NewFronts event.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.

To speed advertiser adoption, the three media companies are hoping to make it much easier for brands to define their specific audiences and target them most efficiently, in a consistent manner, with publishers of their choosing. Measurement of campaign outcomes will be reported in a consistent format as well.

“We now have to become very data-centric and almost data experts in order to execute audience-based buys,” Porter says.

Among Turner’s contribution to OpenAP is the more than 100 linear TV, audience-based deals the company has executed to date, Porter explains in this interview conducted at Beet.TV Executive Retreat 2017 by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp. Turner has learned a lot along the way.

“When setting up these campaigns, there’s a lot of friction in defining the audience segment,” Porter says. In addition, there’s the job of “getting the advertiser to help us figure out how we’re going to score that with historical viewership data and build that audience segment.”

As ADWEEK reports, OpenAP’s goal is to create a standard audience targeting platform that will allow for more transparency in audience buying and consistency of data use. OpenAP, which will go into beta this summer, will factor into the companies’ upfront talks this year, according to ADWEEK.

“The OpenAP announcement is huge because it will enable scale and efficiency in the industry,” Porter says.

Turner has been offering “two flavors” of audience targeting guarantees: a double guarantee on both the demo and the audience segment within a single network, and a “true audience impression guarantee across our portfolio,” he adds. “Our core proposition is that we can move through a whole continuum of KPI’s.”

This video is part of a series produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat in Vieques.  The event and series is presented by Videology and 605.  For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

Turner Ignite Sports is the latest iteration of Turner Ignite, which was created to offer content and data solutions. It’s described as an in-house, full-service sports marketing agency focusing on intellectual property, live events and experiential marketing, creative services and data solutions, as ADWEEK and Digiday report.

In an interview with Beet.TV, Kavilanz says Turner Ignite is well into virtual reality video creation along with finding niche audiences for marketers across Turner’s massive social, digital and linear presences.

One example is Turner Ignite’s work to promote Sully, the Warner Bros drama film about the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Calling VR “a fascinating place where we love to experiment,” Kavilanz explains how a VR camera affixed to the underside of a helicopter simulated the flight path of the crippled airliner, generating video that was augmented by CNN footage.

Having created a compelling piece of content, the next challenge was locating and targeting VR enthusiasts, according to Kavilanz.

“Given the fact that we are able to access all of Turner’s social handles, we’re able to find people who like VR,” Kavilanz says. “We have found that there are certain people who will watch anything that’s VR-centric on YouTube or Facebook. Because of our unique structure, we’re creating an audience of people who love VR in addition to people who are fans of a respective show.”

Turner initially believed its Turner Ignite clients would consist mostly or solely of its linear TV advertisers. But with so many marketers of all sizes having jumped onto the content marketing bandwagon, they need help finding audiences for it, according to Kavilanz.

Most of Turner Ignite’s work involves traditional one- or two-minute videos. “The way we typically structure these deals there is a content component and a media component,” Kavilanz says.

Using its data and insights to make sure the content reaches right audience, Turner Ignite guarantees video views or impressions. “About 70% of our deals are on a cost per view basis and the balance on a CPM basis,” says Kavilanz. “We’re also offering the opportunity for guarantees of a minimum of 30 seconds of view time, which is very unique and something advertisers are increasingly asking more and more to participate in.”

One code in particular that Turner Ignite would like to crack is video sharing, according to Kavilanz. “What we’re going after is not just deriving a quality view, we’re trying to unlock the share,” he says. “That’s something that we’re spending a considerable amount of time figuring out how we can do both.”

“We’re just beginning to experiment with one company that’s involved in that,” Geraci, who is President of National Broadcast for the media agency group, says in an interview with Beet.TV at CES 2017.

He describes it as “sort of a rethinking of the whole Canoe idea,” a reference to the 2008 launch of Canoe Ventures by a half dozen major cable operators. The initial concept of the company was to develop interactive TV ads, as ADWEEK reports.

The modern iteration would direct advertising not on a local basis as with addressable, which is limited to two minutes of local advertising inventory, but on a national basis based on what’s known about specific households.

It could involve “ten versions of a particular brand advertisement that has different meanings for different individuals,” Geraci says. “But really it would be in that one commercial position that the advertiser owns with a particular national network.”

As for local addressable TV ads, “As you get these distribution platforms to be bigger and of greater scale that can then precisely target households and you’re covering most of the U.S., it becomes a bigger idea,” he adds.

On the subject of commercial load within programming, Geraci lauds the efforts of media companies like Turner that are experimenting with fewer commercials in addition to offering brands sponsored content opportunities that are complementary with programming.

“I give them credit for trying to address this head one and de-commercialize at least one of their networks in a major way to see if that’s going to improve viewership,” Geraci says. “Let’s face it. If they build ratings by lowering commercial load then they’ve got more GRP’s to sell. So in their view I guess it’s a practical business model to try and do that.”

As for branded content that fills in as a substitute for traditional ads, Geraci says Omnicom has experimented with it but the format is limited to advertisers that have “a certain specific message” that ties in well with the content.

“When you’ve got that and can make that work, it’s sort of lightening in a bottle and it’s a wonderful execution to take advantage of. But I don’t think it’s a large scale business that just about everybody can be involved in,” Geraci says.

This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

Cooper cites BuzzFeed as clearly presenting sponsored versus editorial content on the site.   Here is Adweek’s report about BuzzFeed’s project with GE around the Paris Air Show.

We spoke at the Cannes Lions festival where he moderated a panel about digital video presented by Tremor Video and organized by MediaLink.