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Magnite’s Diamond Looks Ahead To Beet Retreat Berkshires

2024-07-17T12:43:47Z

After the advertising industry decamped to the seaside of Cannes in June, movers and shakers will head to the hills.

Beet Retreat Berkshires takes place at the Troutbeck Estate hotel, July 21 to 23, with 125 attendees discussing performance TV advertising, identity solutions, AI and retail media.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Cassidy Diamond, VP of Brand Partnerships and Demand Facilitation at Magnite, explains what she is looking forward to.

Hearing From The Greats

“Absolutely thrilled to be there,” Diamond says. “Having the opportunity to meet and network again with some old friends, some new connections, that’s really exciting and such a beautiful venue.

“Most interesting to me for this event is really listening and hearing from some of the greats like Elizabeth Donovan and Marriott Media Network.

“She’ll be sharing how that opportunity with addressable is really reaching out to broader audiences. I’m excited to hear from her.”

Diamond is also looking forward to hearing the response to the launch of United Airlines’ Kinective media network.

CTV Advertising Offers Immersive Opportunities

Diamond says connected TV (CTV) offers the potential for more immersive experiences through creative storytelling and the use of new interactive ad formats.

“Brands have a big opportunity for really understanding the audiences connected to those opportunities, really creating more storytelling with their creative, and then getting, whether that’s a sequential play, whether that’s leaning into new interactive ad formats,” she explains.

Collaboration and Partnerships are Key to Overcoming Challenges

As marketers face the challenges of restructuring their organizations to adapt to new opportunities in commerce, retail networks, and data, Diamond stresses the importance of collaboration and partnerships.

“How marketers reconstruct their operations from planning to measuring outcomes, breaking down silos within those organizations, I think they really need to lean into working with partners like publishers, the new commerce networks emerging to really understand how they can best deliver those outcomes and results,” she says.

You’re watching “Beet Retreat Berkshires 2024”. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Programmatic CTV Ads Benefit from Contextual Signals: Wurl’s Ria Madrid

2024-07-17T12:43:39Z

CANNES – Households that connect their televisions to the internet enter a digital world filled with a growing number of streaming-video apps. The publishers of those apps are seeking ways to achieve the highest sales of advertising from the automated, or programmatic, marketplace of sell-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs).

“There is a lot of competition now within the SSP and DSP world, and right now, they’re really looking for unique and valuable ways to have a competitive edge,” Ria Madrid, vice president of advertising partnerships at connected-television platform Wurl, said in this interview with Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst at consulting firm TVREV, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

SSPs that represent CTV publishers face challenges in valuing their ad inventories, Madrid said.

“We have seen a huge influx in content consumption to the point where supply is superseding demand by a landslide,” she said. SSPs “need to provide custom solutions that address the challenges they have. Just having some level of standardization across the bid stream, I think, is becoming really challenging for them.”

DSPs that represent advertisers are seeking ways to increase how much those buyers allocate to streaming video. They face challenges with reaching the right audiences at the right time.

“At Wurl, one of our biggest responsibilities is to our publisher and making sure that we are providing them with the tools that they need to best value their supply,” Madrid said. “In order for us to do that, it’s been really critical for us to understand the challenges of the DSPs so we can kind of come in at that intersection between the two to provide solutions.”

Wurl recently released a generative artificial-intelligence product called Brand Discovery to place ads within content that’s most appropriate for the brand. That includes moments that match ads with the emotional context of the programming.

“We’re actually analyzing the content right before the ad break, giving advertisers the ability to target contextually relevant, and at a time where the audience is emotionally primed for that type of creative,” Madrid said.

Traveler Media Offers Omnichannel Reach for Brands: United’s Aaron Gallagher

2024-07-17T15:47:01Z

CANNES – In-flight magazines and catalogs are rarely found on planes these days, but that doesn’t mean marketers are left without ways to engage consumers throughout their travel experiences. With the launch of Kinective Media, carrier United Airlines is setting up a version of a retail media network to help advertisers reach advanced audiences.

“We’re able to target travelers with messaging from marketers throughout the entire traveler journey, whether that’s while they’re thinking about traveling, when they’re in the airport and then when they’re on the flight,” Aaron Gallagher, managing director and head of sales at Kinective Media by United Airlines, said in this interview with Lisa Granatstein, editorial director of Beet.TV, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“When you think about that full omnichannel experience, it really provides commerce opportunities for advertisers,” Gallagher said. “While there’re lower-funnel metrics that can be a part of this, there’s a lot of upper-funnel metrics as well.”

Retailers that sell advertising make up one of the fastest-growing areas of the media marketplace. United sees similar opportunities in what’s being called traveler media. Like retailers that have deep troves of first-party data about their loyal shoppers, United has individualized information about members of its MileagePlus frequent-flyer program.

“When we thought about it, we were like, ‘We’re really sitting on something exciting here,’” Gallagher said. “We have such a great owned and operated experience, whether it’s on United.com, on the United app, through all the presence within our airports and in our lounges and gate information displays.”

In-Flight Entertainment

Airlines have a captive audience of consumers who often are looking for ways to pass the time between takeoff and landing. With video screens on the backs of its plane seats, United seeks to help marketers to reach consumers with undivided attention.

“There is a history of advertising in in-flight entertainment, but when we thought about future and opportunities that existed, we made a decision to commission about 800 new planes,” Gallagher said. “There’s about 200 new planes that are part of the fleet right now and on those 200 planes, there’s a new dynamic in-flight entertainment system.”

Marketers have fretted that stricter privacy laws and the gradual disappearance of browser tracking cookies have added to challenges of ad targeting and retargeting. United can sidestep those hurdles with the ability to identify passengers.

“You have to show your driver’s license, your passport when you’re traveling,” Gallagher said. “We’re able to get targeted in terms of knowing exactly who is sitting in what seat and being able to target people who are sitting in first-class, being able to target by destination.”

Marketers can run what is known as dynamic advertising, which customizes messaging based on the characteristics of the viewer.

“Ultimately, the average flight time for United is about three and a half hours, and people are engaging with screens for over two hours,” Gallagher said. “Being able to get targeted to the consumer by the seat level and be able to surprise and delight them and deliver relevant advertising that might be interesting to them, it’s something that’s really compelling.”

You’re watching “Traveler Media Takes Off,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Kinective Media by United Airlines. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Gaming Is The Next Streaming: Microsoft Advertising’s Lynne Kjolso

2024-07-16T12:34:21Z

CANNES — For the advertising industry, the boom in video game advertising has always seemed to be just around the corner.

But the world of gaming is already rapidly evolving, and with it comes a massive opportunity for advertisers to reach a highly engaged and loyal audience.

With 3.4 billion gamers worldwide, the potential for in-game advertising is immense. Lynne Kjolso, VP of Global Partner & Retail Media at Microsoft, believes that gaming is the next streaming.

Gamer Character Profiles

“There are lots of misconceptions out there about who the gaming audience is,” says Kjolso in this video interview with Beet.TV. “In actuality, nearly 50% of gamers worldwide are women.

”The median age is 33, and all of those gamers are people who’ve been gaming since they were young.”

Gamers spend almost exactly the same amount of time playing as they do streaming, but the gaming experience is much more active and engaged. This presents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach a highly loyal and leaned-in audience, Kjolso says.

Advertising Technology to Supercharge In-Game Advertising

Microsoft is aiming to bring together all of its owned and operated assets across Xbox, Windows, casual games, and new titles from Activision Blizzard King to make it easy to buy, sell, and activate on gaming inventory. “That’s a really big focus for us,” says Kjolso.

To increase in-game spending, advertisers need to be educated on the gaming audience and the opportunities available.

“Every time we talk about gaming, folks are very leaned in and we’re putting a big emphasis on custom playable custom experiences that really give brands a new canvas,” Kjolso explains.

The Role of AI in In-Game Advertising

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now emerging into in-game advertising equation, just as elsewhere in advertising. AI is used to create the right ad units in the gaming experience, ensuring that they are immersive and engaging without alienating gamers.

On the ad side, AI is leveraged to automate campaign creation and provide marketplace horsepower in a programmatic context. “AI is underlying all of that shift to in-game advertising,” says Kjolso.

She expects to see tools that automate marketing workflows, such as creative generation, creative review, and A/B testing.

“As we start to develop new consumer experiences for AI, like today, chat is very prolific and we provide very relevant ads in chat that consumers actually love and engage with,” Kjolso explains.

“As that starts to happen, I think that we will have more and more innovative ad formats that are powered by the AI engine.”

Disney Embraces Automation and Interoperability in Ad Sales

2024-07-16T12:33:58Z

CANNES — Disney’s annual upfront meetings in New York this year included plenty of commitments to ad automation, with about 50% of its ad sales being automated and addressably led.

The company offers its clients flexibility in how they want to transact, whether directly, through PG, or through biddable options.

“For us at Disney, we are really growing and expanding our automated opportunities and our clients really want it,” says Mark Olsen, SVP of Disney Ad Sales, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

Interoperability and Data Enablement

Interoperability is another key focus for Disney, as it seeks to enable data that makes sense for its clients.

This includes looking at retail media data, setting up new unified offerings with DSPs, and working with third parties like VideoAmp and Samba for measurement, insights, and attribution.

“There’s a lot of tech enablement that we’re doing,” Olsen says, highlighting partnerships with companies like Bright Line and Kerv for e-commerce and interactivity with streaming platforms, as well as large programmatic partnerships with The Trade Desk and Google DV360.

Self-Service Platform for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

Big brands are not the only ones to get a look-in.

Disney has also set up a self-service platform called Disney Campaign Manager to cater to small and medium-sized businesses.

In 2023, the platform had 4,200 brands up and running, representing over a thousand agencies, with 85% of those agencies being net new to Disney.

For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Data Collaboration Unlocks Insights for Marketers: LiveRamp’s Daniella Harkins

2024-07-16T13:54:45Z

CANNES – Privacy laws in many parts of the world have limited how brands can use people’s personally identifiable information for advertising and marketing. Amid these restrictions on the data they collect, brands must find ways to collaborate with other data sources to improve the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.

Data collaboration is “how you can leverage your data, partner data and third-party data in a way that you can action off of it, drive insights off of it,” Daniella Harkins, senior vice president of go-to-market at LiveRamp, said in this interview with Lisa Granatstein, editorial director of Beet.TV, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Data clean rooms allow marketers to match their consumer-data records with other sources of information without commingling them. The aim is to preserve data privacy.

“When it’s oftentimes correlated with a clean room, and then the other piece of it is: it’s really around partner data,” Harkins said, “being able to take your first-party data and potentially a partner’s first-party data, and being able to share data in a privacy-centric and compliant way.”

Maximizing Retail Media

Retailers that sell advertising typically have significant amounts of information about their customers, either through shopper loyalty programs, online registrations or other methods of tracking purchase histories. These data resources are valuable to advertisers that seek to pinpoint current or prospective customers.

“You need access to other partners and you need access to the data, because as a brand, you’re never going to know everything that you can about me as a consumer,” Harkins said. “It’s a match made in heaven, being able to bring these capabilities together.”

You’re watching coverage of Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit: Retail & Commerce Media, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at Cannes Lions 2024 presented by LiveRamp. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Data Sources Fuel Commerce Media’s Results for Marketers: Criteo’s Todd Parsons

2024-07-15T12:42:21Z

CANNES – Retailers that sell advertising have emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments of the media marketplace. The enthusiasm for these retail media networks, and commerce media at large, was evident at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“For the first time, we’re able to stitch together the customer journey, or the consumer journey, from the time that brands are discovered and considered all the way down to the point of purchase and measure it,” Todd Parsons, chief product officer at Criteo, said in this interview with Jon Watts, managing director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement. “It’s a very exciting progression in the media space for that reason.”

Criteo is working with retailers to maximize the value of their advertising inventories, building on its experience in digital marketing and with harnessing different kinds of data.

“We have constantly been looking at product data, not just product catalogs of our customers, but also across product catalogs of different manufacturers,” Parsons said. “In a way, we have a view of how products are organized across the entire consumer landscape: what gets purchased, when what gets purchased with it, how things are priced, where they’re in stock.”

Behavioral data gathered from different e-commerce and offline environments, along with media consumption are a second important part of Criteo’s data architecture. Finally, first-party consumers from data of its customers and partners also help to define audiences.

“We need to not only be an easy way to bring data in and protect it on behalf of our different stakeholders, but we need to be able to push it to the edges very effectively,” Parsons said. “We’re constantly looking for ways to make it a lot easier for marketers and media owners to collaborate with their data.”

You’re watching coverage of Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit: Retail & Commerce Media, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at Cannes Lions 2024, presented by CMX, Criteo, LiveRamp & Snap. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

AI Poised to Transform Video Targeting, Says Silverpush’s Agnew

2024-07-15T12:41:43Z

CANNES — Could artificial intelligence be about to revolutionize the way brands advertise in online video? One executive thinks so.

AI is set to transform how brands can take advantage of the actual content inside the videos against which they advertise, instead of relying on more traditional methods.

“AI allows us to really understand what is happening within the video that is being watched at that moment, and we think that is going to transform where video goes going forward,” says David Agnew, Head of Midwest Sales at Silverpush, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

Scanning Videos for Context

Silverpush is a contextual intelligence company whose platform scans videos to identify content which could be advantageous for particular brands to advertise against.

“Silverpush predominantly works within the YouTube space,” Agnew says. “However, we provide offerings across all videos. So that could be CTV, OLV and all of the above.”

“We believe AI is going to transform how brands can take advantage of what is actually happening within the video versus legacy targeting solutions that have leaned predominantly on metadata and audience data and things of that nature.”

Brands Investing in AI Capabilities

“Silverpuh is a technology company specializing in AI-driven marketing and measurement solutions.

Its services include cross-device mapping and attribution, which tracks user interactions across multiple platforms to better understand consumer behavior.

The company leverages proprietary audio beacon technology, allowing for synchronized marketing across devices. Silverpush’s products are designed to enhance the effectiveness and analytics of digital advertising campaigns, providing insights and data to advertisers for informed decision-making in their marketing strategies.”

Agnew says he is encouraged that many brands are eager to explore AI’s potential for advertising.

“Like many people, we are hearing a lot about AI and AI’s influence on all things,” he says, after attending the Cannes Lions advertising festival.

“The takeaway for me is that there’s still so much more to learn, but it sounds like so many companies and brands are very interested and invested in uncovering more of these capabilities. So we’re excited about that.”

New Insights to Accompany New Targeting

But, beyond targeting capabilities, Agnew is also enthusiastic about how AI could unlock new understanding of video viewers.

“We think we’re in a really, really strong position to help brands go further, further with their targeting,” he says. “And for me, possibly what excites me most are the new insights that are going to accompany all these new targeting solutions that are out there.”

Augmented Reality Helps to Differentiate Retail Media: Snap’s Kevin Longo

2024-07-11T13:05:31Z

CANNES – Social-media companies in the past decade have built out their commerce platforms, helping brands to drive direct sales. As they collaborate with retailers that sell advertising, they are finding ways to complement each other’s strengths.

“For everything that retail media networks have, one thing they don’t have is consistency,” Kevin Longo, head of commerce at social-media company Snap, said in this interview with Beet.TV contributor Tameka Kee at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“We play a little bit something different for every partner,” he said. “Some people look at us on the simpler end of just really high reach, a unique audience and cheap CPMs. Then some people who have more sophisticated integrations.”

https://www.beet.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gen_AI_Lens.mp4

Source: Snap

Snap’s image-messaging app Snapchat pioneered consumer adoption of augmented reality, which overlays digital images on the real world as seen through a smartphone camera or wearable device. Snapchat’s face filters are a popular feature for driving engagement with the app and with brands that sponsor customized AR content.

“One thing that’s been really interesting is a lot of these guys are seeing our offering and augmented reality as a unique opportunity to differentiate their own platform,” Longo said. “As they think about unique audience, cheap CPMs, performant, but also we get this unicorn ad product of augmented reality.”

CTV and Retail Media – A Match Made in Advertising Heaven?: TripleLift’s Annie Vines

2024-07-11T13:38:10Z

CANNES — The future of advertising may well lie at the intersection of two of the fastest-growing channels – connected TV (CTV) and retail media. But marrying the two is not without its challenges, says Annie Vines, Senior Director of Business Development at TripleLift, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

CTV offers a premium, high-impact advertising environment, while retail media networks provide rich first-party data and the ability to measure return on ad spend (ROAS). Bringing the two together could be a powerful combination for advertisers looking to reach audiences at scale with targeted, personalized messaging.

“We don’t necessarily think that means it can’t be successful for business outcomes,” says Vines. “When we look towards the future, I think the intersection of commerce and retail or retail media and CTV is really poised for growth and innovation.”

Overcoming Fragmentation and Measurement Challenges

However, there are still hurdles to overcome before CTV and retail media can truly come together in perfect harmony.

Fragmentation across the CTV ecosystem, lack of standardized measurement, and difficulty attributing conversions across devices and platforms are all see as holding back progress.

“Retail media is kind of accustomed to the lack of standardization and on CTV there is no cohesive measurement,” Vines tells TVREV co-founder Alan Wolk. “So it makes it a little hard to measure ROI or any type of conversions when the measurement’s not consistent across the different CTV platforms.”

Creative Innovation is Key

TripleLift is a technology company specializing in programmatic advertising solutions. Their platform utilizes computer vision technology to integrate advertisements with content, enhancing user experience and engagement.

TripleLift’s services include native advertising, branded content, and OTT (over-the-top) video ads, which are designed to be less intrusive and more contextually relevant.

For retailers looking to dip their toes into the CTV waters, Vines advises getting comfortable with being in different parts of the funnel beyond just the bottom. Personalization and creative innovation will also be vital to driving outcomes.

“At TripleLift, we are using our learnings from our web executions to inform our CTV strategy,” says Vines. “At the end of the day, we keep coming back to ad innovation and innovation in the creative for CTV.”

You’re watching “Connected Insights: Innovation in CTV Advertising,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series at Cannes Lions 2024, presented by TripleLift. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. To view all of Beet.TV’s Cannes Lions 2024 content, please visit this page.

Bringing Video Ad Creativity to Mobile’s Full-Screen Canvas: Digital Turbine’s Mark Slade

2024-07-11T13:05:20Z

CANNES — Advertising creativity is celebrated each year at the Cannes Lions festival.

But ironically, when those same ads play out in digital media, they are often relegated to feeds, screen corners or other sub-optimal placements.

“Ultimately, we don’t allow that creativity to shine on the digital platforms,” complains Mark Slade, VP of Brand at mobile ad-tech company Digital Turbine, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “That for me is the biggest challenge around how digital displays this wonderful video creativity.”

Mimicking TV’s Full-Screen Experience

Digital Turbine is a software company whose technology facilitates app discovery, user acquisition, and engagement for advertisers.

Digital Turbine’s in-app mobile ad formats aim to elevate creativity by mimicking the TV viewing experience. The ads take over the full screen, pausing the app’s content, whether it’s a game or a video, while playing out with the sound on.

“They stop the content, whether that’s the game that you are playing or the content that you are consuming, we play the video and then we go back to the content just like TV on the full screen with the audio on, with all the metrics that you would expect from a video ad,” Slade explains.

Getting Creative With Interactivity

Mobile’s intimate nature also opens up new opportunities for interactivity that can extend the story of the video creative.

Slade cites examples from the entertainment sector, where Digital Turbine has enabled rich media overlays that let viewers engage with the characters from the ad.

“What we’ve started to see is that brands and agencies getting a lot more creative in the way they add interactivity around that video,” he says.

“For me, that’s the exciting thing about mobile versus maybe traditional TV or cinema. We can take that experience that you get from that video ad and then add that interactivity on top.”

You’re watching coverage of Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit: Data, Identity & Measurement, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at Cannes Lions 2024, presented by Digital Turbine, IAS, Intent IQ & TransUnion. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. To view all of Beet.TV’s Cannes Lions 2024 content, please visit this page.

Connected TV Brings Digital Capability to Linear TV, Accelerating Growth for Unilever

2024-07-10T20:50:07Z

CANNES — Retail media spending is surging, as more ad buyers turn on to the idea of being seen where commerce happens. But how exactly are the world’s leading CPG companies thinking about retail media when it comes to connected TV (CTV)?

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Aaron Sobol, Head of US Media Investment & Partnerships at Unilever, says Unilever works closely with various retail media networks as joint business partners to accelerate existing capabilities.

The company has connected retailers with its national video partners to bring together rich first-party shopper data and closed-loop measurement.

Convergence of Content, Shopper Data, and Closed-Loop Measurement

One of the most exciting innovations in connected TV, according to Sobol, is the convergence of high-quality content with shopper-based data and closed-loop measurement.

This convergence creates a new need for the industry to have multi-layered partnerships that connect retailers, partners, and brands.

Closed-loop measurement determines if an impression can be attributed to a sale. While it has been known for decades that advertising on TV can drive business outcomes, digital capabilities now allow for faster analysis of those outcomes and signals.

Unilever’s goal is to move from metrics to outcomes, as metrics matter, but the company wants to focus on the outcomes that will ultimately make them accountable for the growth needed to take their business to the next level.

TV’s Fragmentation Lets Brands Reach Audiences Better: DIRECTV Advertising’s Cordes

2024-07-10T18:02:47Z

CANNES — The proliferation of connected TV services is giving viewers more choice – and advertisers more challenges.

But, ultimately, the new opportunities to reach viewers is a win for brands, according to one TV exec.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Brian Cordes, Head of Client Partnerships & National Offices, DIRECTV Advertising, says the new TV landscape is a positive for both consumers and brands alike.

Fragmented Landscape

Cordes acknowledges the current TV and video landscape is “completely fragmented”, both for consumers and for advertisers.

But he says DIRECTV is trying to simplify that.

“You think of Netflix or an HBO Max as really competitors to a linear TV service,” he says. “But we don’t see it that way. We see those are our partners.

“What we’re bringing to the marketplace is really more of an aggregated solution for consumers. So you can get into the DIRECTV service, you can watch live TV, but you can seamlessly then go to your streaming apps that we know everyone obviously has and loves.”

Targeting Through Fragmentation

For advertisers, Cordes says the same fragmentation is an opportunity. Addressable TV advertising technology allows brands to target viewers wherever they are watching.

“We are allowing for addressability, allowing for targeted advertising, reaching that consumer when and where they’re engaging with that content,” he says.

“It’s less about the idea that you buy a show and you hope your audience is watching. What addressability allows you to do is you buy an audience really reach regardless of what they’re watching, which allows for huge advantages, both from a brand and agency perspective.”

Frequency-Capping

In particular, Cordes says addressable advertising allows brands to manage the number of times a viewer sees their ad.

“Reach and frequency optimization has probably been the biggest change that I’ve seen over the last few years as far as addressability goes, especially as it relates into linear TV space,” he says.

“For years … TV has always kind of oversaturated heavy TV viewers, but there was nothing that brands could do about it.

“They were trying to deliver obviously a certain level of reach … but they didn’t necessarily know how they were getting to that reach because certain people were viewing the ads significantly more than others.

“Reach frequency optimization is just allowing addressable technology to reach more evenly deliver impressions to advertisers or to consumers, but also allowing advertisers to drive incremental reach.”

You’re watching coverage of Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit: Streaming TV & Digital Video, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at Cannes Lions 2024 presented by DIRECTV Advertising, Spectrum Reach, TripleLift & Wurl. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. To view all of Beet.TV’s Cannes Lions 2024 content, please visit this page.

‘AI Has Been Explosive for Contextual’ Advertising: GroupM Nexus’s Adam Steinberg

2024-07-10T12:46:34Z

Artificial intelligence technology is making contextual advertising – or placing ads next to content that’s most likely to get the attention of a target audience – more powerful as privacy laws limit how brands can use people’s personal information for marketing purposes. These limitations, along with concerns about brand safety and the eventual disappearance of browser tracking cookies, have help to renew the use of contextual advertising.

“AI has been explosive for contextual,” Adam Steinberg, head of performance at WPP’s GroupM Nexus, said in this interview with Lisa Granatstein, editorial director of Beet.TV.

“When it comes to the amount of contextual space and inventory that’s out there — the scale at which our clients, our teams are very interested in exploring — there’s a lot to mine through,” he said. “The AI aspect between contextual allows us to find and navigate faster and with a lot more nuance that I don’t think humans can manually do themselves and sustain at the scale that we need to.”

A key goal is to make advertising feel less intrusive by being more relevant to consumers. Reaching people when they’re most likely to be receptive to advertising also is paramount.

“There’s a lot of different opportunities to learn about who our consumers are from data, and then pair that with contextual signals that would be still very relevant,” Steinberg said, “but maybe not as directly obvious as what they’re interested in in the moment.”

Advertisers can get the most out of contextual AI by determining the most important characteristics of the audiences they want to engage.

“There’s a lot more than just keyword and demographic types of capabilities that we can pick up signal wise. AI can help us go a lot deeper and understand the nuances,” Steinberg said. “I would encourage from a best practice standpoint to explore a little bit deeper about who your audiences are, the types of content and just their overall consumption patterns, and try to leverage AI to find the sweet spots.”

You’re watching “The Power of Context: Driving Attention to Intention in a Privacy-First Era,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Seedtag. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

AI-Powered Emotional Ad Matching Lifts Ad Metrics: Wurl’s Crofut

2024-07-10T18:02:37Z

CANNES — Can you put a price on emotions? For advertisers, Wurl, thinks it has found a way.

The company offers tools for video monetization, allowing advertisers to deliver content across various platforms.

Its latest product, BrandDiscovery, allows advertisers to precisely match their ad with the context and emotion of a scene, right before the ad break.

Emotion Before Ads

The product is the result of a year of testing and learning how emotions correlate to better ad performance and engagement.

“When you match emotion to the content or live programming right before the scene and it matches that ad break, you get better performance,” says Peter Crofut, VP of Business Development for Agencies & Brands at Wurl, in this video interview with TVREV co-founder Alan Wolk.

“We see 2x to 3x in our own internal testing and then we’ve seen some really exciting results when testing with brands.”

Emotional Resonance Drives Results

Wurl’s AI scores live programming and ad creative to understand what emotions are contained within, using a model based on psychologist William Plutchik’s famous “wheel of emotions”. The AI is constantly learning and discovering new categories of emotions that work for advertising.

In one test with an agency looking to reach millennial moms, Wurl found that matching sentiment in the video creative with the ad break led to a 7X increase in brand awareness and 2X lift in purchase intent.

Another test for a QSR brand found that high joy anticipation is a precursor to being hungry, driving incremental foot traffic and sales.

Bringing Emotion to Media Planning

Agencies can use Brand Discovery to understand the emotion of their creative and audiences, and then match those to Wurl’s available ad impressions.

Beyond emotional contextual matching, Crofut sees a bright future for AI and machine learning in advertising. He points to innovations like Media.Monks’ AI robot that interviews people and sketches their picture, as an example of the rapid progress in the field.

“It’s a really exciting time to be in our business,” Crofut says. “When we come here next year, I think we’re going to see an explosion in innovation like no other period of time in our industry.”

Marketers Have Opportunity to Diversify Retail Media Spend: Criteo’s Melanie Zimmerman

2024-07-09T12:45:44Z

CANNES – The number of retailers that sell digital advertising has exploded in the past few years as marketers have sought to reach consumers when they’re most ready to shop. Criteo has evolved its ad-tech platform to help bring together these retailers and a diverse range of advertisers.

“We’ve always been performance-focused, and so we are bringing outcome orientation to retail media, whether that’s on-site or off-site, in a unified way,” Melanie Zimmerman, general manager of global retail media at Criteo, said in this interview with Beet.TV contributor Jon Watts at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“We’re more than just an ad-tech player. We’re truly a business partner,” she said. “We can help a retailer launch their own private marketplace, but we also are connecting them to a broader ecosystem of platforms that allow them to access incremental demand.”

Advertisers have a chance to diversify their media investments among a wider range of retailers than a handful of the big e-commerce marketplaces.

“We see that globally, Amazon represents more than 70% of retail media ad spend, but they are not representing 70% of e-commerce,” Zimmerman said. “There’s an opportunity for advertisers to diversify their investments, and that is not easy for them. For us to help the retailers, we’ll help the buy side as well by providing tools that make it easier.”

TelevisaUnivision Takes Off, Partnering United’s Kinective For Commerce, Travel Ads

2024-07-08T20:38:45Z

CANNES — Any media owner will claim to have a good on-the-ground understanding of its audience. But now TelevisaUnivision is taking that to the air.

The Hispanic-focused media company is expanding its footprint with retail media partnerships as well as travel media partnerships, such as with United’s new Kinective Media Network.

In this video interview with TVREV co-founder Alan Wolk for Beet.TV, Fernando Romero, SVP, U.S Digital Advertising Sales, TelevisaUnivision, explains how it works.

Merging Data Powers Kinnective Media Platform

United Airlines recently launched its Kinective media network.

‘The World’s Most Addressable TV Screen’? United’s Kinective Takes Flight: Richard Nunn

TelevisaUnivision is partnering with Kinective in several ways. The company is putting its content, such as its ViX property and unique programming, on United’s in-flight entertainment systems, to engage with Latinos and US Hispanics.

“We were partners with them from a content standpoint, and we were also partners with them from a transactional standpoint to grow the ViX footprint and subscribers,” Romero says.

“We’re going to continue to grow that partnership also by lending our data on behalf of their data and really merging the two to really power their Kinective media platform.”

TelevisaUnivision’s audience is important to travel companies because they over-index in terms of the number of flights per year, the number of people that travel per group, and purchasing power, Romero explains.

Romero says commerce media delivers return on ad spend (ROAS) by integrating brand dollars with transactional dollars to create commerce at the backend.

Celebrating What Unites While Understanding What Defines

TelevisaUnivision reaches 80% of US Hispanics on a monthly basis.

It celebrates what unites US Hispanics but also understands what defines them individually, which gets taken down to a local level.

“The top 10 markets, top 20 markets, we have local footprints from a radio station perspective, but also from an on the ground activation perspective,” Romero says.

“We give back to the community, try to understand those different nuances where it’s going to be education, voter reform, or other programs that will continue to kind of elevate US Hispanics specifically on the market by market basis.”

You’re watching “Traveler Media Takes Off,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Kinective Media by United Airlines. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Beet Retreat Berkshires; A Special Moment for the Media Community, TransUnion’s Matt Spiegel

2024-07-08T14:39:05Z

Movers and shakers from the advertising, media, ad-tech and consumer data industries this month will converge at the Beet Retreat Berkshires to share ideas about the future, strengthen professional ties and make new friends. The highland region in northwestern Connecticut offers a scenic, woodland escape with colonial New England charm.

“One of the reasons that I’m really excited about participating in this Beet event is it … actually hearkens back to some of the great early Beet Retreats that I got to be part of,” Matt Spiegel, executive vice president at TransUnion, says in this video. “What was so cool about those forums, it was the mix of a very cool location and a really cool, somewhat tight-knit community of people that were all solving for similar challenges.”

The Beet Retreat Berkshires will include discussions about the ever-evolving media landscape, the power of data in shaping advertising strategies, the growing role of retail media networks, the latest advancements in audience measurement, the advanced capabilities of connected television and how technologies such as programmatic advertising and artificial intelligence are helping advertisers.

Visit this page for more information about attending the Beet Retreat Berkshires 2024. TransUnion is a sponsor of the Beet Retreat.

Dow Jones Embraces AI Amidst Surging Demand for Reliable News: CEO Latour

2024-07-08T12:49:11Z

CANNES — If any news publisher knows the numbers behind AI effectiveness, it must be Dow Jones.

The company, which also owns The Wall Street Journal, covers the growing trend daily, and recently inked a big deal with OpenAI.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal publisher Almar Latour says the firm is embracing AI opportunity across editorial and advertising.

Advertiser Assurances

Growing reader demand is bringing in an audience of decision-makers across business and investing, as well as everyday consumers looking to manage their personal finances through uncertain times. That presents an attractive proposition for advertisers, Latour believes.

“Between the reliability and the audience, there’s a lot there for advertisers that should give them comfort that they’re speaking to people who really care,” he says.

Dow Jones also offers an ad tech tool called Safe Suite to help brands meet their brand safety objectives.

AI Ambitions

Latour says Dow Jones has a long history of working with AI, from automated headlines to algorithmic trading. Now, with the rise of generative AI, the company is focusing on three key areas:

Securing intellectual property rights to ensure its information is not absorbed into AI models without financial or commercial consequences.
Deploying AI tools internally to assist reporters with research and summarization, freeing up time for deeper, higher-quality reporting.
Meeting customer demand with new AI-powered products. Dow Jones recently launched Integrity Check, which uses generative AI to help customers research business risks. More such products are on the horizon.

Experimentation and Best Practices

For publishers looking to experiment with AI, Latour advises first assessing the value of their information and ensuring they can secure it. “Don’t give it away and don’t give it away cheaply if you know that it’s worth more,” he says.

Down Jones owner News Corp struck a deal with OpenAI in May reported to be worth up to $250 million over five years – one of many partnerships OpenAI is inking while other firms launch copyright suits against the company.

Experimentation is key, both for internal workflows and new products, Latour says. Dow Jones has started with smaller, more focused areas to maintain control over the outputs.

Latour also stresses the importance of investing in proprietary data and distinctive journalism. “That will make a difference vis-a-vis learning models taking from a much broader data set,” he says.

‘Milliseconds Matter’: FreeWheel Boots-Up Live Programmatic Ads For Paris Olympics

2024-07-03T12:22:46Z

CANNES — When you are trying to target and serve programmatic ads to TV, every millisecond counts.

Timed for NBC’s coverage of the upcoming Paris Olympics, ad-tech company FreeWheel is launching a new suite of programmatic software geared toward live delivery.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Mark McKee, EVP & GM, FreeWheel, explains why it is important.

Solving Live Complexity

According to its announcement, the suite includes the following features:

Expedite programmatic activation via creative pre-approvals and transcoding to minimize latency.
Expand advertiser diversity by increasing inventory opportunities for more advertisers.
Anticipate real time surges in live viewership to properly scale server capacity.
Adjust campaign pacing to account for high viewership to maintain seamless ad experience.

“Programmatic is one way to solve for the growing complexity of what streaming means”, McKee tells Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein.

But, whilst some premium streaming publishers have seen programmatic ad sales jump by up to 600% in four years, live sports is still a small fraction of programmatic spending.

To change that, McKee thinks “direct connections” between ad buyers and sellers is essential.

“In live (TV), milliseconds matter,” he says. “If a programmer or publisher is going to take their most prized asset or tentpole and allow it to be transacted in a more automated or a more dynamic way, then certainty between buyer and seller and the brands that are being represented needs to take shape.”

Challenge of Demand

A recent report from FreeWheel says live sports streaming can be powerful not just for reaching large audiences at scale, but for bringing people together.

“Fifty percent of people say they watch live sports with someone else,” says Mark McKee, EVP & GM of FreeWheel, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “Live sports specifically draw that communal aspect of the power of TV.”

New report from @FreeWheel — It’s only live once: how TV advertisers can capture audiences in the moment. #FreeWheelEmp https://t.co/oj39mwFXpe pic.twitter.com/mZtISLGTe3

— virginie (@virginiedremeau) June 21, 2024

As more consumers access live programming via streaming, advertisers and publishers are having to adapt.

“The industry is hurtling towards a more streaming-based model as it relates to distributing TV content, particularly live sports,” McKee says.

“Any one piece of content can be distributed across more than 400 endpoints for that consumer to watch it. That’s not easy for the publisher or the programmer that’s sending it out. That is very much challenging for the buyer or agency that’s trying to execute that campaign.”

For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Identity Resolution Key to Bold Marketing in Fragmented World: TransUnion’s Spiegel

2024-07-02T13:04:29Z

CANNES — In a media and marketing landscape more fragmented than ever, the concept of identity resolution is fundamental to being a bold marketer.

So says Matt Spiegel, EVP of TransUnion’s TruAudience Growth Strategy, who believes marketers must stitch together a full picture of people and households in order to drive growth.

“Every marketer is working towards some level of more growth, performance, personalized experiences,” Spiegel says in this video interview with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein. “The commonality that allows you to create a seamless infrastructure or seamless experience rather, is an identity resolution infrastructure.”

Identity Underpins Marketing Funnel

Identity resolution is not just about the technical pipes, Spiegel says. Rather, it underpins the entire marketing process.

“Having an understanding of real identity allows you to go from planning to figure out who are my customers, and then start to think about who would I want to reach?” he says. “Doing really sophisticated modeling to find the people that are actually going to drive growth ultimately through to measurement.”

Without consistency in understanding who consumers or households are, “you lose the ability to be really confident in your marketing strategies,” Spiegel adds.

Making Identity Easier

One of the key challenges in identity resolution is stitching together different device signals, platforms, and environments.

“It turns out there’s a lot of work under the hood there, and it takes sometimes too much time to get data where it needs to go,” Spiegel says. “Sometimes there’s too much loss, sometimes it’s too expensive to make all this happen.”

TransUnion is focused on making identity resolution easier, faster, and more configurable. The company has been in-market with identity resolution tools, but is now working on “stitching ’em together into a set of interfaces and APIs that makes it easier to access simplistically,” Spiegel says.

AI Speeds Insights

Artificial intelligence is also playing a key role in identity resolution. TransUnion has long used machine learning algorithms to find patterns in data that would take humans too long to discern.

Now, the company is also leveraging generative AI and large language models to enable non-data scientists to use natural language prompts to discover new audiences and trends.

“How do you make it so a non-data scientist, a lay person who is a marketing strategist, can come and write the correct prompts, discover new audiences, find trends in performance that you wouldn’t have necessarily seen by asking smart questions IE prompts,” Spiegel says. “That’s something that is a huge part of what we’re building.”

Identity Anchors Good Marketing

As the marketing ecosystem coalesces around the importance of identity, Spiegel believes TransUnion’s message is resonating.

“Identity resolution is a strategic to foundation, to big, bold marketing,” he says.

“And we’re really trying to continue to say there’s a way to take out the complexity of this, that you can be anchored on identity resolution.”

Strategic Audiences, Live Programming Deliver Results for Advertisers: NBCU’s Maggie Zhang

2024-07-02T13:10:59Z

CANNES – As advertisers seek to win over their most likely customers, they increasingly rely on a variety of data sources to optimize their media spending. NBCUniversal, a unit of Comcast, has developed advanced capabilities to help advertisers reach people by audience segments.

“We are doubling down on strategic audiences because we truly believe the future of advertising is in audiences,” Maggie Zhang, senior vice president of strategy and operations, data, measurement and insights at NBCUniversal, said in this interview with Beet.TV contributor Jon Watts at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“For strategic audiences, we really mean the definition of an audience beyond traditional age and gender,” Zhang said, referring to how television audiences have been measured for decades. “NBCUniversal has been creating our first-party identity and data platform, NBCUnified. Now we’re able to reach over 200 million unique IDs and over 90 million households.”

Gen AI Audiences

During its upfront sales presentation and its One24 technology conference, NBCUniversal this year introduced audience targeting that harnesses the power of generative artificial intelligence. It analyzes content across the NBCUniversal portfolio paired with the company’s first-party data sets to define emotion-based, AI-powered audience segments.

“We’re leveraging the emerging new technology — generative AI, computer vision, deep learning, and large language models — to help unpack the connection between content, human emotion and the predictive behavior that will drive eventually the advertising outcome,” Zhang said. “By leveraging the new capabilities, we have developed over 300 new gen AI-powered first-party audience segments. We’re now actually in live beta with live advertiser campaigns.”

Live Programming

Video-on-demand platforms have given television viewers more control over their viewing experience, but live programming such as sports and awards shows can reach large audiences who want to see events as they happen. Live programming also can delivered through traditional linear television and video streaming.

“We truly believe live is actually the powerhouse in the video marketplace. Live is so unique with a combination of reaching people in the highest moment of engagement,” Zhang said. “cross NBCU linear and digital inventory, the entire portfolio can truly build reach quickly just within a very short period of time during the live viewing.”

You’re watching Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2024. To view all of Beet.TV’s Cannes Lions 2024 content, please visit this page.

CTV and Branded Content Offer New Opportunities for Molson Coors

2024-07-02T12:35:38Z

CANNES — As younger audiences increasingly turn to ad-supported CTV platforms for their content, marketers are taking notice.

For brewing firm Molson Coors, the shift to CTV is about more than just following the consumer. It’s also opening up new possibilities for branded content partnerships that go beyond traditional advertising.

“CTV is obviously beyond a new trend today. It’s now I would call the mainstream play, especially where younger consumers consume content,” says Brad Feinberg, North America VP of Media & Consumer Engagement at Molson Coors, in this video interview with CIMM MD Jon Watts for Beet.TV.

Branded Content Offers Deeper Engagement

Feinberg sees particular potential in partnering with CTV platforms to create original branded content. As these platforms look for ways to differentiate themselves with high-quality programming, they are increasingly open to working with brands to fund and develop new series.

“More and more of the CTV companies are looking for brands to help fund the actual content itself,” Feinberg says. “We can have a seat at the table all the way upfront in the development stages of that content where the output of that is something that may feature our brands or is tied to a cultural connection that we want to make to create some borrowed equity off of.

“More and more of those opportunities are becoming available.”

Traditional Ads Becoming “Obsolete”

For Feinberg, the appeal of branded content on CTV goes beyond just the opportunity to align with premium programming. He also sees it as a way to engage audiences who are increasingly resistant to traditional advertising.

“I think traditional advertising is somewhat, in many ways obsolete in a lot of spaces,” Feinberg says. “I think as consumers learn to find ways to skip ads or have availability to skip ads, they will skip ads.

“So I think it’s a CTV and content in general where we have the opportunity to embed ourselves in the stuff that people and consumers are seeking out.”

‘The World’s Most Addressable TV Screen’? United’s Kinective Takes Flight: Richard Nunn

2024-07-02T12:41:39Z

In an age of distraction, many advertisers wish they could tap into a captive audience.

Well, there can be few more captive viewers than those on a jet plane.

That’s why United Airlines recently launched Kinective Media, billed as the world’s first traveler media network of scale.

In-flight Addressability

With over 165 million passengers flown in 2023 and more than 100 million unique IDs, United Airlines aims to offer advertisers premium audiences across an omnichannel network.

Kinective Media spans United’s entire digital ecosystem, from its website and app to airport lounges and gate information displays.

“The big thing will be the IFE, the inflight entertainment screen, and that we think will become the world’s probably most addressable TV screen,” says Richard Nunn, CEO of United Airlines MileagePlus, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“I think no one’s opened this whole sector up in terms of an airline at scale and the unique aspect of the dwell time in a plane.

Differentiating in the Commerce Media Space

The outfit aims to offer both brand and performance advertising opportunities. While the brand play may be obvious with video screens on planes and in lounges, Nunn emphasizes the performance aspect as well.

“There’s a play in terms of that whole data aspect as well on the performance side of life,” he says, referencing United’s relationships with Chase and Visa.

Kinective Media has partnered with LiveRamp to activate audience segments based on factors like destinations, cabin class, and household income levels.

Traveler Data Can Pinpoint Audiences: GroupM’s Brown

Tapping into New Verticals and Use Cases

United Airlines’ launch partners span beyond the travel industry, with luxury, auto, and finance brands already on board.

Nunn envisions emerging use cases with rideshare companies, who could leverage United’s data on when people are flying to optimize their most profitable airport routes.

Event-based companies could also activate campaigns on the fly, targeting passengers headed to specific destinations.

You’re watching “Traveler Media Takes Off,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Kinective Media by United Airlines. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

Contextual AI Empowers Advertisers With Customized Audiences: Annalect’s Clarissa Season

2024-07-01T12:41:12Z

As consumers seek more control over how their personal data are shared with brands, marketers are returning to contextual advertising – or placing ads next to content that’s most likely to engage a target audience. This shift is occurring as advances in artificial intelligence fortify contextual signals.

“Contextual AI can help influence consumer behavior in a couple of different ways,” Clarissa Season, chief experience officer at Omnicom Group’s Annalect, said in this interview with Lisa Granatstein, editorial director of Beet.TV.

“First, it can help us to better identify the contexts that are going to make the most sense for our audience,” Season said. “It can also help us to build pieces of creative on the fly that are contextually relevant.”

Generative artificial intelligence technology was popularized by apps such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which was designed to quickly generate responses to questions written in everyday language. Gen AI can also be used to assemble customized imagery for ads, though the process has led to thorny legal disputes over the use of copyrighted material to train AI algorithms.

“We don’t fully understand all the laws related to AI,” Season said. “Assembling creative that you’ve produced outside an AI context is completely legal, but if you’re starting to have images generated on the fly, that starts to become potentially problematic.”

Some advertisers are hesitant to use gen AI unless it’s clear that they aren’t infringing the intellectual property rights of creators or the owners of creative works.

“You want to understand the laws and the ethics behind what you’re doing, but I think as you jump into it, you want to keep the consumer at the front of your mind,” Season said, “because if we are not doing something that’s going to ultimately benefit the consumer, we’re just doing something cool because it’s cool.”