Together, the pair have just bowed HealthyDay, an iOS app that shows US users local colds, flus and allergy symptoms as though they were checking the weather. The project was implemented sister agency Mirum.
For JWT NY executive creative director Eric Weisberg, the project exemplifies how “data and technology … are both changing everything that we do here”, Weisberg tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
HealthyDay uses health information from healthcare professionals, hospitals and the Center for Disease Control, plus adds in user-contributed symptom reports.
“It literally helps you outsmart cold, flu and allergies with the same speed and accuracy that you’re outsmarting weather and traffic in things like (traffic app) Waze,” Weisberg adds. The bonus for Johnson & Johnson? HealthyDay recommends product solutions to sick patients.
We interviewed him 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.
]]>“Data’s not new,” Sable tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Thirty years ago, we all grew up using data. Today, we have way more sales data available. The problem is, it is all about what I did 10 minutes ago. The trick is to turn it in to insight that might inform me what I’m about to do 10 minutes from now.”
In a recent LinkedIn post, Sable argued people often mistake applied technology for new technology, saying people tend to see everything that is new as never-before-seen. He says marketers need to know more than basic data about consumers.
“It’s not about Big Data – in our world, it’s about primal data,” Sable tells Beet.TV. “It’s about you as a person – I need to understand who you are and why you’ve done what you did. Otherwise, all I have is a record of what you did 10 seconds ago.
“I need to know more about you. We have more data about your health, we have more data about when you wake up in the morning, when you go to sleep at night, what you buy, where you’re walking. All of this adds to a picture of you as a person that we can use to give you more information.”
We interviewed him 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.
]]>Speaking with Beet.TV in this interview ahead of her visit to the upcoming Cannes Lions festival, SMG CEO Laura Desmond says:
We interviewed her 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.
]]>“We are thinking not just data-centric but data-centric as it involves your entire media investment,” ZenithOptimedia activation standards, insights and technology EVP Julian Zilberbrand tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “That means taking insights that you learn in one channel and applying them effectively in another.
“The more information you know about (consumers), the better you can communicate and give them messaging that is relevant for them. Data allows us to do that, but the opportunity to do that in a way that scales across multiple media types is an opportunity that’s still evolving.”
Zilberbrand is heading to Cannes Lions hoping the discussion about so-called “programmatic” ad buying, which he says has long happened in the US, is becoming more global.
We interviewed him 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.
]]>What is true[X]’s big idea? Rewarding viewers for interacting with good ads by showing them fewer ads overall, says co-founder Joe Marchese, in this video interview with Beet.TV. Marchese is now President, Advanced Advertising at Fox Networks Group
“If, in one session, it could do the work of 20 exposures, why couldn’t we reduce the ad load by 20?,” Marchese says. “Why couldn’t everybody win? Consumers get less ads, publishers get rewarded for quality and advertisers get a return?”
“You could be watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Fox.com – you click play and it says ‘we’re going to give you a choice’ – you can actively engage with this ad … when they’re done, they can go back in to the show and watch it without commercials.”
“Ad load” is a thorny question – too many and viewers may switch away, too few and broadcasters may not get their pay day. For Marchese, the answer is simple: “More ads, more avoidance. Every ad model built for the internet is built for tonnage – billions and trillions of impressions. The goal is to generate as many page views as possible, not the longest engagement. There has to be a model that favors quality over quantity.”
The true[X]’s platform now being used by Fox, Viacom, CBS and AT&T.
Marchese’s close relationship with 21 Century Fox’s James Murdoch incoming CEO is discussed in this article by Emily Steel in The New York Times.
Disclosure: true[X] is a sponsor of Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions.
]]>“A lot of the headlines have gotten it incorrect,’ he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The headlines are ‘AOD is dead’. The fact is, AOD in automation is more alive than ever.
“What’s happening is, a lot of those employees are coming out of a centralized structure and being pushed in to the operating agency. That’s great news for the entire business. It means the experts in automation will be the folks talking to the clients, sitting at the table when strategy comes together. That means a more holistic approach to automation.”
Sears says Rubicon will be hosting panels on retail and automating advertising on a dramatic rooftop location during the Cannes Lions festival later this month.
SMG programmatic SVP Mac Delaney previously told Beet.TV that VivaKi, too, is not dead. “VivaKi still lives on. AOD is just one component of VivaKi.” Rubicon recently helped Publicis’ Digitas enable ad orders programmatically.
We interviewed him 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. This interview took place in the London office of SMG.
]]>But, whilst the new smartwatch category may whet appetites with the prospect of advertising to audiences’ wrists, the reality will have to be more sensitive, more nuanced, and may be more about input than output.
“Nobody’s really cracked what the Internet Of Things opportunity is. Will we deliver advertising? Probably, but not in the way that we’re currently used to it,” SMG digital managing partner Isabelle Baas tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“Will we use it more as a way of saying, ‘I know that you’re here, would you like to see a message on a display in store that’s around you?’? I think that’s probably more the type of advertising that we’ll play in.”
In April, Juniper Research forecast marketer spending on smartwatches will reach $68.6m by 2019. But that estimate could be far too small if you consider the smartwatch and mobile as interlocutors, rather than distinct devices.
“I think there’ll be much more data,” Baas adds. “What do we learn about the different sensors, what can we read from the information that will be made available to the screen? Rather than say, ‘I’m going to try to fit a display ad on the watch’.
We interviewed her 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. This interview took place in the London office of SMG.
]]>Case in point – programmatic, automated sales of display advertising are now gobbling up a large portion of the digital industry. Now ad tech house MediaMath is working to bring programmatic even to offline media.
MediaMath‘s OPEN global media partnerships VP Sam Cox calls it “media enablement”.
“You’ve seen some of that in programmatic print with (our deal with) Time Inc,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “It’s about taking things that are not necessarily programmatically-addressable today and making them programmatic.” As AdAge put it recently: “Machines are now selling some print ads at Time Inc.”
This new-wave ad tech is one of the trends MediaMath will be discussing at this month’s Cannes Lions festival. “It used to be we were going because the media people were there. Now I think the media people are coming because we are there as well, and ad tech is not an afterthought,” Cox adds.
We interviewed him 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. This interview took place in the London office of SMG.
]]>Since then, the programme has been kept somewhat under the radar. But the man who runs it now opens up on the rationale and its early progress.
“In the past, we thought we could create everything ourselves,” SMG strategic development director Jim Kite tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “As technology is changing people’s lives, we can’t do it ourselves – we have to make new partnerships.”
NextTECHnow sees SMG representatives build relations with tech startups and groups around the UK, auditing their efforts for “business-ready” state.
“We have people on the ground in the tech hubs, constantly going to the accelerators like BBC Ventures, Collider or Seedcamp, feeding us new startups,” Kite says.
“We take (client) briefs out to TechCity and the other tech hubs (like) Newcastle, Bristol, Hull… connecting brands and technology solutions. We’re a kind of match-maker.”
So far, NextTECHnow has seen SMG bring brands tech from:
“We never have a problem with anyone turning up to our meetings, because everyone wants to see all this technology,” Kite adds.
We interviewed him 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. This interview took place in the London office of SMG.
]]>“Standards like the RTB spec and the exchanges need to wake up start adding more metadata to these requests to enrich that buy for the brand,” according to Coull product VP Nick Forsberg.
His company analyzes videos to deeply understand the content and context contained within their frames, making that information available as more refined data against which to buy video ads.
“A lot of tech vendors in the world doing post- analysis are still very behind in terms of the moment we need to say, ‘Yes it’s okay to show an ad’.”
Coull of Bristol, England, in April unveiled a software development kit allowing mobile publishers to have access to video advertising.
We interviewed him 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.
]]>Pippa Glucklish, UK co-CEO of SMG, tells Beet.TV the “tension between data and creativity” should be de-fused.
“People should be trying to weave those two things together,” she says in this video interview. “We need to let go of the idea that data is all about efficiency. Data unlocks and informs creativity.”
Glucklish will be looking for just such marriages when she helps judge Cannes Lions awards at the upcoming advertising festival this month.
SMG owner Publicis recently acquired the demand-side advertising platform and data management platform operator RUN to pull some of these functions in-house. Glucklish says agencies and clients are often confused by the number of vendors on the scene: “By buying our own … we’re not dancing to anyone else’s tune.” SMG continues to use other platforms, too, however,
We interviewed Glucklish in the London offices of SMG 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.
]]>“We’ve seen … 40% more demand in the UK from Q1 to Q4,” according to video ad tech outfit TubeMogul’s UK MD Nick Reid. “We’ve also seen a 20% increase in CPM prices. Different regions are at different stages of understanding.
“We’re starting to see broadcasters like Channel 4 embrace the concept of automation. They’ve opened up their VOD to to automation – not yet linear but, it is the first iteration of automated trading.”
Reid says different regions around the world are at different stages of understanding when it comes to adopting programmatic automation.
“Programmatic TV won’t be an instant reality in markets like the UK because there are nuances when it comes to broadcast and supply,” he says. “However, broadcasters are starting to embrace the data they have in a way that can enable advertisers to be more specific when it comes to reaching target audiences.”
We interviewed him 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.
]]>It’s a charity ride in which Parker is one of 11 competitors. “We’re hoping to raise over £100,000. We’re racing our friends and colleagues at GroupM,” he says.
When he gets to the Cannes Lions advertising festival, creativity will be the watchword on the industry’s lips. Nothing new there – Cannes has been discussing creativity every year since its inception. But achieving that is changing over time, Parker says.
“Creativity now comes from collaboration … different people from different departments in different businesses coming together to try and bring simplicity,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“We have a couple of media owner partners who work on this floor (of our office). We’ve also got clients on this floor. We are in a world where you have to be more naturally open and collaborative. One or two people just do not own the answer. You have to remove all the walls. Cannes is a great celebration of that.”
We interviewed Parker 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.
]]>Marketing the missing services using video is something video ad tech firm Videology is helping one UK telco do, according to UK MD Rich Astley, who would not name the client.
“Video tends to be used as a branding and attitudinal medium,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “In this instance, we’re seeing great results, from an ROI perspective, in terms of driving product sales.”
Think about serving up an ad for an IPTV subscription to a customer who is currently only taking phone and broadband, for example.
That is the kind of creative and innovative thinking Astley says typifies the relatively small UK market and which he says will be on display at the upcoming Cannes Lions festival.
We interviewed Astley 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.
]]>At times, it’s pushed to the background as an enabler. And at time it becomes a central topic,” AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“We’re at a point in the cycle where there’s so much fragmentation … that the question of how we advertise … is really important. The more complicated the world is, the more we need technology.
“Maybe five years from now, we’ll have nailed the core technology and the fragmentation will have slowed down and it will be creative again.”
We interviewed O’Kelley 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.
]]>“For five years, we had a good relationship,” AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Last January in Davos, I found 15 minutes with Martin Sorrel and said, ‘Martin, you really need to take this incredible asset that Xaxis has in open ad stream and combine it with all the tech that AppNexus has so that an can be the best ad technology business out there…’.
Under the deal, WPP put $25 million in to AppNexus but gave it control of its Open AdStream technology, rebadged “Xaxis For Publishers”. It was about giving AppNexus control of one specific piece of its offering.
“I see it as a perfect complementary relationship…,” O’Kelley adds. It’s critical to our future and I think it’s pretty important to Xaxis as well.”
]]>“We act as their data management backbone, taking a lot of their offline data and activating it in the programmatic world,” eXelate CEO Mark Zagorski tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “This is the culmination of that relationship.
“We’re bringing together two amazing data sets – the census-level data that eXelate captures in the online world, and the very detailed panel-level data that Nielsen has been known for. It’s something that the marketplace has been looking for. We bring to them the new world DNA of the ad tech world.”
Zagorski is excited about “how we take the product roadmaps and combine those to start co-building products from day one”.
More on Nielsen’s expansions reported in the Wall Street Journal last week.
]]>“VivaKi still lives on,” says SMG programmatic SVP Mac Delaney in this video interview. “It operates the SkyScraper platform, the database for all of the group’s campaign reporting. You still have VivaKi employees dedicated to the AOD operating system. AOD is just one component of VivaKi.”
As reported earlier this year, VivaKi unit is rethinking the way it delivers programmatic services, moving from a centralized offering to threading the new discipline throughout sibling agency departments.
“They’re spending several days per week embedded within those teams,” Delaney says. “We’re bringing them further up the chain in strategy and planning.”
]]>“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.”
]]>“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’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.
]]>“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.
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