BeetCast

Welcome to this episode of the #BeetCast

In this episode, I am very happy to welcome our good friend and industry leader Sean Cunnigham, CEO of the VAB, previously known as the Video Advertising Bureau. The VAB is the essential advertising industry organization for the television programmers, networks and the entire TV industry.

An ad man in previous life, Sean has been at the helm of the organization for 18 years and has seen a lot of changes.

Probably none as dramatic as what is happening now with the big switch to audience-based buying versus age and demo. Sean and his team have been guiding the industry through this transition. In this interview, speaks to the big changes in TV ad investment and what it all means from recent market research.

Sean also addresses the value and shortcomings of panels and the problems with accuracy of the Nielsen ratings during the pandemic. He says the industry expects transparency and hopes the Nielsen will fix the problems which largely remain.

A great conversation. Thank you Sean for this insightful interview. And thanks for your friendship and support for Beet.TV

And thanks to our podcast sponsor Mediaocean

And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.

It may not happen overnight, but the evolving nature of TV consumption methods is bringing a "tipping point" in the way that TV ads are bought and sold.

That is according to a veteran media agency executive who has been observing the long arc of supply and demand toward a profound shift.

In my podcast interview with former GroupM global chairman Irwin Gotlieb talks about how connected TV is re-shaping the TV upfront ad sales season.

Media's pincer move

Gotlieb sees two big dynamics.

1. Shift from linear to non-linear content

"In a linear world, you can use programming strategies - things like lead-ins, lead outs, hammocks, tent poles, that kind of stuff. You can use the built-in promotion schedules... In a nonlinear world, it's much more challenging to create awareness. If you can't create awareness, your audiences are going to, by default, be smaller."

2. Growth of subscription content

"In a world where subscriber support is growing (relative to) advertiser support, what you have is a situation where you have supply diminution and that is inflationary on CPMs. There's almost no way to offset that, and that's a huge challenge."

The future of the future

Irwin's tenure at GroupM parent WPP began in September 1999 when he joined the company as Chairman and CEO of Mindshare Worldwide. He launched Mindshare North America by consolidating the media resources of JWT and Ogilvy,

His ad industry career, however dates back to 1970. In 2007, he was named one of the media industry's top 25 most influential leaders by TV Week and inducted into Broadcasting & Cable Magazine's Hall of Fame.

Now Gotlieb says the big media shifts are creating a big moment in the evolution of TV advertising.

He says the upfronts are a "futures market" and, with TV ad supply decreasing but demand continuing to be high, "there is in fact a tipping point".

"I'm not suggesting in any way that upfronts are going to go away," Gotlieb points out. "I don't think they ever will. Futures markets will always exist in some form in the media world. Will they exist in their present form? I'm not certain."

Dollars to dimes?

Of course, all TV and video companies are heavily invested in transitioning to the digital, non-linear world of which Gotlieb is talking.

But he thinks a clean conversion that protects all revenue won't be possible - because it won't be possible to protect all ad inventory and all views.

"The commercial loads that are going to be acceptable in AVOD in the nonlinear world are going to be one third of what they had been in the linear world," he says.

"There is only one potential solution to that - refined targeting and addressability ... something to be blunt that hasn't developed at the pace that it should have.

"Today, I think the media sell side has to deal with the reality that they have lower commercial loads and audiences are drifting inexorably in that direction.

"The buy-side is either going to be faced with skyrocketing cost per thousands or improved targeting and addressability solves the problem for both (sides)."

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The BeetCast is sponsored by Mediaocean.

He had a successful exit when his start-up Tru Optik was sold to data giant Transunion last year. But it was tough sledding, building an advanced media data business five years ago. Now a super-hot sector, Andre was ahead of his time.

While he made early progress with product development and industry partnerships, funded from a few early stage angel investors, access to venture capital was nearly impossible. While he says the adtech industry was open to him, he was shut out by VC's — unable to even to get preliminary pitch meetings. He blames racial bias.

With VC's investing less than 1 % in Black-founded start-ups, Andre is committed to changing the equation both by his example, advocacy and now personal investing in promising companies.

This is one of the topics covered in a wide ranging podcast session moderated by guest host Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp. They cover a number topics including the transformation of TV, the background and promise of the acquisition by Transunion.

Editor's Note: This episode was published in January of the year. It is as compelling and important as ever, so we are republishing it this week.

While we are focused this week on our June 23 Responsible Media event around initiatives from GroupM, other media agencies charting their own course to to a more inclusive, sustainable media landscape.

In this week's episode of the #BeetCast we explore the topic through the initiatives of the Publicis Groupe and the Spark Foundry agency. Our guest is Jason Smith, President, Diversified Investments at Spark Foundry, a unit of Publicis Media.

Jason is twenty-year veteran of the agency world with time as Horizon and Mindshare. He joined Spark Foundry earlier this year in a newly created role

In our chat, he speaks to the imperative of media investment around the increasingly diverse U.S. consumer population. He says one of the barriers to investment is the under representation of diverse groups in panels and other audience planning measurement methodologies.

This is a very open and direct on the need and outlook of real change in the advertising business.

Great conversation. Thank you Jason.

And thanks to our sponsor Mediaocean for supporting this podcast.

And thank you for listening!

This week our guest is Doug Rozen, CEO of Dentsu Media Americas. Doug has been a media innovator for many years. We've covered him extensively at OMD then 360i and now as the newly named head of media at Dentsu Americas.

Doug articulates the vision of his company as becoming more meaningful to the consumer and to brands. He speaks about marrying sophisticated targeting and AI with personally optimized creative. Meaningful Media is the new mantra at Dentsu, he explains.

Thanks Doug for a fascinating conversation.

Big thanks to Mediaocean, the sponsor of the #BeetCast

And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.

My guest this week is Louisa Wong, Wavemaker CEO of the Americas.

She is a pioneer in the programmatic space, starting her career on the sell side with stints at AOL, CNET and at Sky where she headed the satellite company's trading desk.

She joined the buy side in the early days of Dentsu's Amnet and remained with the company at its Amplifi and Carat units. The British born executive moved from London to New York five years ago.

Last just July, she was tapped to head the Americas region for GroupM's Wavemaker.

In our conversation, she speaks about her career and her perspective racial bias in the United States as a British Asian. Speaks of her hopes that her work will lead society to a better place.

And she speaks about the evolving role of the media agency and the direction of Wavemaker with a range of brands including several, new disrupter companies.

Great conversation. Thanks Louisa.

Thanks to the BeetCast sponsor Mediaocean.

And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Advertising campaign success and agency compensation is increasingly tied to outcomes as measurement has become more robust, says Marla Kaplowitz, President and CEO of the 4A's, the trade association of the advertising industry, in this podcast conversation with me.

She speaks about the 4A's four pillars of media responsibility. She reflects on how the pandemic and the racial justice movement of the past year have accelerated change.

Please join me and Marla and other industry leaders on June 23 at 1 p.m. on for our #ResponsibleMedia Global Forum, live on LinkedIn Live, Twitter and YouTube. The project is being co-produced by Beet.TV, GroupM and the 4A's. For more information, please visit this page.

Marking the two years since Cannes, we are doing a very exciting program with GroupM and the 4A's. We are convening a global forum on Responsible Media on June 23.

The virtual event will explore the future of media as being responsible and sustainable with some 30 speakers from the WPP/GroupM agencies, media, brands and technology companies.

The program takes its lead from the Responsible Media investment initiative from GroupM. The initiative was announced last month by Kirk McDonald, CEO of GroupM NA.

Kirk is today's guest on the BeetCast. He explains the imperative for the responsible media program and other projects aimed to boost under represented voices.

We also go deep on WPP's new agency called Choreograph and plans to drive unified user identity across its global network.

In our chat, shares his hopes for the conversations during the June 23 Responsible Media Forum.

Very happy to have our colleague and friend Pooja Midha, Chief Growth Officer of Comcast Advertising, on this episode of the #BeetCast podcast.

Pooja is a veteran of senior advanced TV roles at Viacom, Disney and as CEO of trueX until earlier this year.

For all of us, it's been a challenging time during the pandemic: For Pooja it has been an especially tumultuous year that included the sale of TrueX, a pregnancy, the birth of a second child, and joining Comcast in a senior role.

In this session, she speaks about her experiences as a woman of color. She shares her hopes for a more inclusive, bias-free workplace. She reflects on her own journey and tells what she is doing to help others.

Very happy to welcome to the podcast Lance Neuhauser, a visionary leader and a great guy.

Lance has a fascinating background as a veteran media agency executive at Omnicom and in recent years, as a pioneering entrepreneur.

He is the co-founder of 4C Insights. Last year, the company was sold to Mediaocean where he now serves as president.

Why the name 4C? Lance explains it was the luck of airline upgrade to business class which put him in seat 4C, next to Alok Choudhary, the renowned computer scientist from Northwestern. They hit it off and the rest is history.

Great conversation with Lance about leadership, innovation, omni-channel marketing, and his personal commitment to music education for all kids.

Special thanks to Lance and the Mediaocean crew for being the sponsor of this new season of the BeetCast. I am super grateful to your longstanding support.

And thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy the episode.