BeetCast

For over 50 years, Mediaocean, formerly known as Donavan Data Systems, has been the software solution of choice for both advertisers and sellers., powering ad management, inventory and billing.

With the acquisition of 4C least year, Mediaocean has become a cross platform player, expanding beyond its roots to planning, optimization and measurement.

These are some of the conversation in this podcast with Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise and guest host Matt Spiegel, EVP of Transunion and head of its fast growing media vertical.

Proper frequency management and the introduction of interactive, personalized ad experiences are are among the key elements essential for the success of advertising in converged TV, says Joanna O'Connell, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research in this #BeetCast podcast.

The session is guest hosted by industry consultant and advisor Jon Watts.

O'Connell points to important innovations including Hulu's pause ads and TripleLift's dynamic ad placement.

She and Watts talk about the state of measurement and the needs for a common currency to plan and manage advertising.

In December, Twitter announced the integration of third party verification vendors to validate advertising in its live feed.

Integral Ad Science is one of the providers, and its CEO Lisa Utzschneider expects that other social platform will follow, responding to marketers' demands.

This was one of the topics covered in this podcast episode of the #BeetCast, guest hosted by industry consultant Matt Prohaska.

They covered the increasing importance of verification around contextual marketing, and the battle in combatting a rise in fraud around CTV.

Lisa is one the most accomplished leaders in digital media. She started out 20 years at Microsoft where she spearheaded monetization at MSN, moved on to help build the Amazon advertising business and then to Yahoo where she was Chief Revenue Officer. She joined IAS two years ago.

AdTech is booming. Our podcast guest this week is Terry Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, who explains what's happening and where things are going.

Many of you know him for his industry visualizations called the LUMAscape, his firm's deals, his speeches and his very humorous take on things in his clever videos. He is a unique and admired presence in our industry and I am pleased that he has joined me for this episode.

During the pandemic, he and his team have been very much engaged in deal making. After a slow Q2&3, LUMA has been on fire with several high profile transactions. He sees accelerated activity in the M&A for this year.

In our chat, he talks about a number of topics including a roaring stock market for adtech, which he figures was up about 200% last year. (The TradeDesk enjoys a market cap of about $35 billion.)

And he talks about a pretty amazing upside for outcome-based marketing which he says could create trillions of dollars in value. That's right trillions. He says that App marketing has proven the math and science of marketing to outcomes. He predicts these practices will become increasingly pervasive all media, including linear TV.

Wow: It seems like only yesterday, in 2015, that Terry declared to an assembled VIP industry group, that "winter is coming" to the adtech space, a winnowing of players, perishing in a dark world dominated by Google and Facebook.

Well, for sure there has been a lot of consolidations and flops, but it's very encouraging to see the innovation and value creation taking place in our industry.

Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a Transunion company.

Despite the disruption from Covid, on so many levels, it has been a time of innovation and acceleration in the digital industry.

Things have changed dramatically and enabling many of those changes has been the IAB, known as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the industry trade group that serves the digital publishers and the broader digital media ecosystem.

Heading the IAB is David Cohen, who happened to take over the IAB in March of last year, just as we entered the lockdown. Tough task, but this advertising veteran, most recently president of IPG's MAGNA, is demonstrating what agility looks like.

In this BeetCast podcast, we spoke about the upcoming IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, a tentpole event that was planned to take place in Palm Springs in March, but now is virtual. At the conference, David will host a much anticipated fireside chat with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

He anticipates a big virtual conference turnout, bigger than the number of folks who could manage to travel to Palm Springs. This is one of the upsides of successful virtual events, he explains.

In our chat, we spoke about social media and disinformation, the growing value of news, the importance of identity in a post cookie world, and the accelerated convergence of digital media and television.

Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a Transunion company.

This week's episode of the #BeetCast is guest hosted by Matt Prohaska, who I met around 10 years ago when he ran programmatic advertising at The New York Times.

He moved from there to form a powerhouse consulting firm in his name. Matt is one of the brightest lights in our industry, a super great guy and I am grateful to him for his support and help over the years.

This week's guest is Megan Clarken, CEO of Criteo. Megan joined the company late in 2019 after a 15 year stint at Nielsen where she was most recently chief commercial officer.

Far from her home base in Paris, Matt caught up with the New Zealand native in her warm getaway in Miami.

In this session, Megan, reflects on the growth of measurement, the importance of identity, the power of shopper data, business opportunities outside the Walled Gardens, what's next for Criteo and her hopes for the industry.

It's a virtual CES this week. it will be interesting to see how it goes. However it goes, I am pretty sure that our future industry events will be some sort of hybrid of live and virtual.

And that will probably be the case for Cannes Lions, says Michael Kassan, my guest this week on the #BeetCast. Kassan is CEO and founder of MediaLink, the powerhouse consultancy. MediaLink is a unit Ascential, the owner of Cannes Lions and other major industry events.

As usual, MediaLink will play a giant role at CES this week by programming the C Space, throwing a big virtual networking party and with Michael moderating one the of the conference's most anticipated keynote sessions – this with Ann Sarnoff, CEO of WarnerMedia Studios.

In our chat from his home in Los Angeles, Michael speaks about the future of live events including plans for Cannes Lions, which is on, health safety issues permitting.

He talks about the new workplace norms, the state of agency reviews, and addresses key industry trends this year including e-commerce, streaming TV, and an explanation of why adtech is so hot these days.

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.

Digital publishers and platforms have become adept at controlling fraud, but not so good about more subtle problems around content adjacency. There remains a lack of transparency around where a marketer's content will run and the impact of associating with sensational advertising.

Says Scott Hagedorn, CEO of Omnicom Media Group in this BeetCast podcast moderated by Matt Spiegel, EVP of Transunion.

Part of the problem is that sensational content optimizes algorithms that in turn pull advertising in. While the number of impressions might be high, associations with the content is not necessarily valued and potentially detrimental to the advertiser, Hagedorn warns.

In this wide-ranging conversation, topics include identity, privacy and the importance of the integration of the supply chain with media investment.

The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Opik, a Transunion company. Please visit this page to find more episodes of the BeetCast and to subscribe via your preferred podcast service.

It is becoming common for investment in OTT and addressable TV to be 50 percent of total video spend for many major brands, says Doug Ray, CEO of Dentsu Media, in this episode of the BeetCast podcast.

The episode is guest hosted by Joanna O'Connell, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.

The dramatic transformation in video investment is just part of deep dive into many transformative changes taking place in advertising including the resilience of digital media through the pandemic; outcome based modeling, omni-channel investments, the rise of DTC, privacy/identity and the maturing of creative optimization solutions.