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We turned to Stephanie Dorman, Chief Customer Officer at Mediaocean.  Stephanie is  a veteran of the ad-tech industry and has been watching the changes for women in the industry. Formerly as Chief People Officer at Mediaocean, she has lead many innovative programs to make the company’s workforce more diverse. There has been improvement for women, with  more gender balance, she says, yet many challenges remain for women i the workplace including their primary role of care giver.  She speaks to how that role has been amplified during the pandemic. One thing that is not talked about is the impact of menopause.  It’s a key  factor  Stephanie says, and  is important to be addressed in finding a productive, nurturing workplace.

We talk to three industry thought-leaders who will be speaking at the Beet Retreat in San Juan.

Advertising on ecommerce sites is a high-growth segment of digital media as marketers seek to reach digital shoppers closer to the point of sale. Amazon, Walmart, Target, Albertsons, Kroger, Best Buy and Macy's are among the retailers that sell online ad space on their websites. Instead of being categorized as a type of “performance media” that includes in-store promotions, retail media networks have emerged as their own category. In this episode of the Beetcast, two experts discuss the promise of retail media networks: Jess Huang, partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Co., says retailers soon will sell $100 billion a year of ads on their websites – a “win-win-win” situation for retailers, brands and consumers.  Brian Gleason, the global chief commercial officer of WPP's GroupM who is joining software firm Criteo as chief revenue officer, says retail media is a growth engine in digital advertising.

Roku this month began offering marketers a new kind of guarantee that they’re reaching target audiences through its streaming network, which has 50 million active accounts in the United States. Its OneView programmatic ad-buying platform now has Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) audience guarantees – the first for TV streaming. “It allows them [media buyers] to see audience overlaps across every major device, channel and publisher – and effectively maximizes their return on investment,” Louqman Parampath, vice president of advertising product management at Roku, said in this #BeetCast discussion with consultant Jon Watts. Parampath also discusses Roku's plans for continuing to build out its advertising platform through partnerships with other measurement companies and technology providers.

Retailers have made a bigger push into the digital advertising market as brands seek to reach consumers when they’re most ready to shop, or to engage target audiences based on other data signals. Amazon has led this growth, becoming the third-biggest digital ad platform after Google and Facebook, while retail chains as varied as Walmart, Target, CVS, Macy's, Albertsons, Kroger and Walgreens also have entered the market. “Because a retailer owns the point of sale and has a broad physical footprint, in theory they have superior data assets,” Andrew Ruegger, global president of commerce at WPP’s GroupM, said in this #BeetCast interview. “They have loyalty programs, but they have a high volume of transactions – so, it’s refreshed and accurate.” Ruegger discusses the advantages and disadvantages of retail media channels, and how marketers can potentially participate in data-driven strategies to reach online consumers at all parts of the purchase funnel. The lower-funnel activities include shoppable video and interacting with customers on  social media apps such as Snapchat. To find where you can subscribe to the BeetCast, visit this page.  The BeetCast is sponsored by Mediaocean. 

Andy Plesser speaks to Sean Cunningham, President and CEO of VAB

Livestreamed shopping videos that let viewers buy products in real time are becoming more popular as the ecommerce marketplace continues to evolve. Social media companies including Twitter are developing more tools to help merchants create a shopping livestream to convert viewers into paying customers. “Looking at the market overall, commerce on mobile is actually expected to double by the year 2025,” Sarah Personette, chief customer officer of Twitter, said in this Beet.TV discussion with Doug Rozen, chief executive of Dentsu Media – Americas. “The way that we think about it is that our shopping experience essentially allows you to watch and experience video live while also buying and browsing those products.” Twitter recently partnered with discount chain Walmart on a live shopping pilot. It included a half-hour variety show hosted by singer Jason Derulo, and featured products that viewers could buy directly within Twitter’s app. The company will continue to push into social commerce as its development teams gather data signals from consumers, Personette said. “Live shopping or social shopping is so new in terms of a consumer behavior today,” she said. “At the start of covid, there were so many different shopping experiences that were immediately launched and I think we have taken a more patient approach….We’re really trying to think holistically about it.” Personette also discusses social audio, the growth in video consumption on Twitter, and how its programming strategy differs from those of media companies and other content providers. To see a video version of this conversation and other episodes of “Advertising Transformation: What’s Next for Converged TV and Video,” a Beet.TV Virtual Leadership Summit presented by Mediaocean. please visit this page.  

In this week’s BeetCast podcast, we are publishing the sound tracks some of the most compelling conversations in recent days.  During CES week, we spoke with many leaders in our industry.  Here are three which we find particularly compelling. *Catherine Sullivan is CEO of PHd, a unit of Omnicom Media Group. She speaks to the imperative for marketers to weave their message into the story, into the fan’s experience. *Eric Austin,Senior Director, Global Brand Building & Media Innovation at Procter & Gamble speaks the proper value exchange between publisher, brand and the consumer.  In this segment, he chats with guest moderator Zach Rodgers. *Jason Dailey, Director, Head of Agency at Meta speaks with me about the Metaverse and the opportunities that it presents to marketers and media companies. It is a really great explanation the Metaverse and why it matters.

Andy Plesser of Beet.TV talks to Brian Weiser, Global President, Business Intelligence at GroupM about shifting attitudes towards tech, his view on web 3.0, the big value of premium content in the streaming wars, and the emergence of super apps in asia as the "next big thing".

Andy talks to Nathan Brown, Global Chief Strategy Officer at UM.

Welcome to this episode of the BeetCast.  I am delighted to kick off our new season in partnership with our good friends at Mediaocean. I was sorry to miss so many of our colleagues at CES last week.   Another essential event impacted by the pandemic, and we were sorry not not to be there.   Very disappointing, but innovation in our world continues on and we are happy to keep our community informed wherever we are are. We were planning on doing a four-hour Leadership summit at The Cosmopolitan with Mediaocean on Wednesday. But, of course, that could not happen, so we pivoted to a live webcast.  I am happy to say it was well produced and attended.  If you missed it, you can find the full program on the Mediaocean site this week.   We  will publish several excerpted segment on Beet.TV in the days and weeks  ahead, long with  many more videos produced outside the summit. Leading off the  leadership event during CES was Rishad Tobaccowala, the noted futurist and author.  Later the week, we caught up with Rishad for this fascinating interview about the future of marketing, media, creativity, and the changes in the agency business.  Fascinating conversation about Web 3.0 and the promise of greater "democratized" creative tools and plaforms. Huge thanks to my colleague Jon Watts for interviewing Rishad. Thank you Rishad for sharing you insights with us.  We are most grateful. Thanks to our podcast sponsor Mediaocean and thank you for listening.  I hope you enjoy the episode.

More exciting conversations from the Beet Retreat Santa Monica.  This week's episode features David Levy, Dave Clark, Kelly Metz, Jon Watts, Denise Colella, and Zach Rodgers.

LOS ANGELES -  More great conversations from the stage of the Beet Retreat in Santa Monica last month.   Delighted  to present thee segments on this episode of the #BeetCast podcast. Lots to  listen to about the changing state of TV measurement with Ashwin Navin of Samba TV in a conversation with Howard Shimmel, plus  a chat between NBCU's Kelly Abcarian and Tracey Scheppach. You will also hear a  conversation about the use of context in reaching the right audience.  This one is with Field Garthwaite from IRIS.TV with Mike Fisher of Essence Global. Thanks for tuning in. And thanks to TranUnion for sponsoring the #BeetCast podcast.

Lots of activity here recently at Beet.TV. The most exciting has been  our first in-person event in over 18 months.  It was the Beet Retreat in Santa Monica last month. We brought together amazing people for long-need in person networking and conversations. At the event, we produced  vast amount of content. We have published  many videos through our network, with more to come. In this episode of the BeetCast podcast, we’ve assembled the audio tracks of three fireside chats.  Great conversations with Matt Spiegel and Zach Rodgers on the topic of identity; Pooja Midha with Denise Colella on diversity, inclusion/equality  and building an effective sales team….. and finally Jon Watts hosting  Sean Buckley on a session about CTV, programmatic and what’s next in the advanced TV marketplace. Thanks to our moderators for making such great content for these sessions . Great conversations! The next Beet Retreat will be in San Juan on February 2-4.  Let me know if you’d like to join us. A huge thanks to TransUnion for sponsoring the BeetCast.

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.

Measurement in an omni-channel media world is increasing complex with the changes in  cookies, mobile identifiers and new privacy regulation.   But what is he personal, unbiased impact of advertising?  For GroupM's Mindshare, it's about measuring "empathy" as registered by biometric feed back. It's called the NeuroLab and it's the the largest longitudinal panel in the United States of its kind, says Shane McAndrew,  Mindshare's Global Chief Data Strategy & Analytics Officer.  Launched in 2019, it has reached "empathy in scale," he tells me in this podcast interview. NeuroLab uses medical-grade EEG (electroencephalogram) and GSR (galvanic skin response) technology to measure second-by-second, non-conscious neurological responses to brand stories and media. The NeuroLab supplements the data from these neurological responses with pre-and-post Implicit Association Tasks (implicit bias testing), as well as quantitative survey responses. We also cover data privacy, ethics, "clean rooms," and the use of first party data. Great conversation. Thank you  Shane. And a big thanks to our series sponsor TransUnion.

We just wrapped our Beet Retreat, an amazing gathering of 200 industry leaders for three days of conversations and learnings. In advance of the event, we spoke with several of the industry leaders who were part of the Retreat. Here are some of voices from the Retreat:  FreeWheel’s Dave Clark, Comcast’s Pooja Midha, WarnerMedia’s Andrea Zapata, Field Garthwaite from IRIS.TV  and Matt Spiegel from TransUnion.

Very happy to welcome back to the show Doug Ray, who holds the title Chief Product Officer, dentsu Americas & Global Media We’ve covered Doug for a number of years and he’s always innovating, seeing what’s next and leading the industry. In his role he is deeply involved with the changing the media landscape.  One of the most intriguing development is around gaming. We all know gaming is huge.  But how to make it work for marketers is not easy.  But Dentsu, with its long-time work in the Japanese gaming industry is uniquely positioned.  Doug explains that. And we chat about the future of media, privacy, targeting.  Great conversation! Thank you, Doug, for joining and for your leadership and support for Beet.TV over the years. Thanks to our podcast sponsor TransUnion. And thank you for listening.  I hope you enjoy the episode.

Donna Speciale, President Sales and Marketing at Univision Communications, talks to Andy Plesser in this week's episode of the BeetCast

The marketing and advertising world is at an exciting, expansive point. In fact the true scope of the industry is under counted. But it lacks the energy and positivity to grow, opines the longtime agency futurist and best-selling author Rishad Tobaccowala in this wide ranging podcast interview with guest host Matt Spiegel, EVP at TransUnion. While he is bullish on the building demand for marketing services, he sees problems ranging from the negativity of the industry trade publications to a lack of leadership at the top. All this leads to a serious talent problem, he says. The biggest marketing opportunity is "data-driven storytelling," he tells Spiegel. In the conversation, he looks to future trends. He offers his advice to marketers to be more focused on the aging population. The #BeetCast podcast is published weekly on Beet.TV and on all the leading podcast platforms. The series is sponsored by TransUnion.