What started in 2011 as a simple blog with the goal of celebrating life through a more creative lens has blossomed into Mr. Kate, a creative lifestyle “infotainment” enterprise. In this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts, Co-Founders Kate Albrecht and Joey Zehr trace the evolution of Mr. Kate into an award-winning home, style and beauty content and products marketer.

The company specializes in long-form video, which has inspired a big following on YouTube. “We really specialize in interior design and DYI home transformations,” says Albrecht. “We do full room transformations on the Internet, which is pretty unique.”

In early 2016, Mr. Kate created its own reality style show called Office Goals by using its own office space, a work in progress at the time, as inspiration. “Entrepreneur saw that as an opportunity to expand upon that, so we did a deal with Entrepreneur and Staples,” Zehr says of the recently announced series partnership.

The goal of Office Goals, says Albrecht, is to help new businesses explore what makes them unique and “helping them translate that into their outer space so that it really represents what they stand for as a business.”

The challenge is integrating Staples products “throughout the whole experience to bring life and creativity to the space,” she says.

Pursuing 30-minute video content as opposed to short-form sets Mr. Kate apart, according to Zehr. “We’re taking some of the old constructs of TV and sort of flipping them on their head and doing those online.”

And while Mr. Kate is all about lifestyle content, another point of differentiation is that it brings “a millennial edge” to bear, “which is one of transparency and authenticity,” says Albrecht.

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.

“We come here because we like to learn what the partners are doing in the digital space,” Hughes says in this interview with Beet.TV.

“We like to understand what’s new, what do they have in terms of data, technology and how are the content platforms changing and evolving with the rapid-fire digital space,” she adds.

What has occurred to Hughes and others about the current state of digital affairs is that everyone’s gone live. “Hulu is doing live this year. Everyone is reporting from Facebook Live or Instagram Live and Snapchat Live. So live is a big thing.”

She surveys the array of content opportunities that can help connect brands with consumers and is about what she sees for the coming year.

“Our challenge is to break through the clutter and to be always relevant. We look at lot to our digital partners to help us stay relevant with consumers,” Hughes says.

Front and center for Conagra are content integrations because they “have been huge for us and they really work well. We are definitely looking for integrations for the next year.”

The conglomerate also is interested in data and analytics and for publishers “to tell us how our brands are performing on platforms in ways that we can constantly push our content to our consumers.”

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.

“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 on the side of brand safety and the biggest decline on the side of virtual reality.”

Last year, Winkler explains in this interview with Beet.TV, you could not walk out of NewFronts presentations “without Google Cardboard strapped to your head looking at the latest virtual reality options.” By contrast, this year some company presentations “aren’t even checking the box, and that’s a function of scale,” he adds. “Our clients need big scale to reach lots of people, and VR isn’t quite there yet.”

On the contrary, there’s no escaping the subject of brand safety in the light of some marketers pulling their ads from digital platforms that haven’t done enough to ensure their content is inoffensive. To Winkler’s way of thinking, there should not be a debate about the need for brand-safe environments.

“There’s nothing more important than the context in which our clients’ advertising appears. That’s what brand safety is,” he says.

Publishers that create and own their content have a “very simple and elegant story” about brand safety, he says. That’s a far cry from platforms that are populated with lots of user-generated content.

“The challenge YouTube will have is trying to combine their massive scale with the technology and human element to make all of our clients feel comfortable about advertising in that marketplace.”

He welcomes the audience-targeting consortium OpenAP formed by Fox, Turner and Viacom because it represents a radical departure from buying TV audiences based on broad age and gender demographics.

Being able to target specific audiences is “extraordinarily important” and it’s going to make TV more effective both for the advertisers and for the broadcasters themselves,” says Winkler.

We spoke with him at the Turner NewFronts presentation.

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.

Given its significant investments in premium video to date and its plans going forward, Condé Nast is in a great place at a great time. Producers of premium video content have two big leverage points—brand safety and audience reach—with which to pry traditional broadcast dollars from advertisers.

In this interview with Beet.TV, Norton discusses rising video consumption and audience numbers that rival not just television, but programming like the NBA and primetime network shows. It represents a “real blurring of lines” between dollars that could be allocated toward broadcast versus dollars allocated toward digital.

“We’re using the same writers, producers, directors that are producing academy award nominated content,” Norton says. “What you’re going to see is us moving from a very text- and image-based company to much, much more focused on video.”

Text and imaging will still be key building blocks. In fact, a number of the feature films that Condé Nast has in production derive from stories in publications like GQ and The New Yorker.

Condé Nast does “a ton” of branded content via its 23 Stories studio, including an always on, cross-platform effort with Cadillac involving more than 50 pieces of custom content. The next step is figuring out how to take that content and “bring it to life in an experience.”

To this end, the company recently acquired an experiential agency called Pop2Life, which offers ideation and strategy, environmental design and creative services, full-service event production, talent procurement and event concierge services.

“It’s really about bridging that last mile of consumer experience. Going from the screen or printed page to an actual, physical experience,” Norton says.

Norton addresses the issue of brand safety from an overall perspective of trust in this interview with Beet.TV. He’s says it’s not just digital that’s being questioned. “Consumer trust and confidence in all of media is really at a record low. You factor in fake news, alternative facts, fraud, just overall brand safety and it’s a bit of an epidemic,” Norton says. Hence Condé Nast’s story for advertisers and agencies is about “the trust of our journalism.”

As for the bigger digital picture, Norton calls on all players to pitch in and help to shape things up. “We want to challenge brands to comply with a lot of the industry initiatives that are happening right now, number one being tag certification,” he says, citing the Trustworthy Accountability Group and Condé Nast’s certification. “Many major industry CMO’s have made it a requirement. We are asking all of our distribution partners to get certified.”

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.