BeetCast: Recent Episodes
Andy Plesser
The Root to the Media Revolution! A podcast about the dramatic changes taking place in the marketing, media, and technology industries.
Each episode features in-depth conversations with the innovators and leaders who are powering transformation.
From Andy Plesser and Beet.TV.
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.
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".
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.
We were at Advertising Week in New York Hudson Yards and we were delighted to see so many colleagues in person. Congratulations to the event producers for taking such care around health safety. It was really well done.
Our world of advanced TV was the subject of extensive programming. Measurement and data was a key content line and we caught up with several execs.
We interviewed each on camera and will be publishing segments over the next couple of weeks. For a preview, we edited the the audio tracks and created this episode with:
- Kelly Abcarian, EVP, Measurement & Impact at NBCUniversal Media
- Sean Cunningham, President & CEO at VAB
- Yan Liu, CEO/Co-founder at TVision
- Ashwin Navin, CEO at Samba TV
- Kate Sirkin, Global Data Partnerships at Publicis Epsilon
- Jonathan Steuer, EVP, TV Strategy & Currency at VideoAmp
- Jon Watts, Executive Director at The Project X Institute
We hope you enjoy the episode.
Thanks to our guests and to the BeetCast sponsor TransUnion.
I am delighted to welcome my dear friend Tracey Scheppach to this episode of the #BeetCast.
I call her the “mother of addressable TV”. Well, she didn’t exactly invent addressable TV but she was by all accounts the first buyer of the medium.
She was deeply involved with pilot projects in Colorado and Alabama in some twenty years ago. In our chat, she recalls those early days and her move to Starcom in 2005 to head the agency’s advance TV practice.
In 2016, she left Starcom to start her own company which is a boutique addressable TV buying agency and an industry consultancy. It is called Matter More Media.
In our conversation, Tracey talks about the evolution of addressable TV over the past 20 years. She speaks of her disappointment that its scope has been limited, increasingly by new “walled gardens of data” now in control of TV manufacturers. She shares her mantra: DATA MUST BE FREE.
We also talks about measurement and the importance of understanding the impact of creative.
A Personal Fight Against Cancer
As many of you know, Tracey has been a brave advocate in the fight against pediatric cancer. Her older son Ryan went through several years of treatment from leukemia. Now sixteen, he is five years out from his treatment and living life as healthy 16-year old. So happy to hear!
Tracy galvanized the media industry around non-profit she founded called TeamBrightSide. Mostly funded by charity triathlon in Chicago, the organization has raised $1.5 million in research money. A substantial amount has gone to the University of Chicago to research and track pediatric cancer.
Please join Tracey and TeamBrightSide team by joining the triathlon or by making a donation to: teambrightside.com
Thanks Tracey for your leadership and inspiring bravery.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by the TransUnion company.
Note: This episode was previously published in April. The topic of data and television will be central to the conversation at the upcoming Beet Retreat in Santa Monica in November where Tracey will be a featured speaker.
Last week was the big, annual brand marketer’s conference in Orlando, the ANA’s Maters of Marketing.
We were not there this year to cover, but heard great things. There was a smaller crowd on hand than normal, but many more folks participated virtually. It was probably the biggest and most successful hybrid marketing industry event so far. Congrats to Bob Liodice and to his team at the ANA for pulling this off.
One of the conference keynote speakers was Raja Rajannamar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Mastercard.
For this #BeetCast podcast, I spoke with Raja earlier last week for a preview his speech and about the big changes underway for CMO’s, as well the emergence of new media platforms and a chat about the future of identity.
Raja is always enlightening and provocative. And he is making a big global impact with his book Quantum Marketing which is on several business book best sellers lists, being sold in over a dozen countries and has just been translated in to Korean, he tells me.
Congrats Raja on the success of the book. And thanks for taking the time to speak with me for this podcast.
And big thanks to the BeetCast sponsor TransUrajanion.
And thank you for listening, I hope you enjoy the episode.
This week’s guest on the #BeetCast podcast is John Osborn, CEO of OMD, the Omnicom media agency responsible for many major brands including Apple, McDonald’s, State Farm and others.
John joined OMD in 2017 from the global creative agency BBDO where he was CEO.
In this conversation, he speaks about managing brand’s media investments during the time of COVID.
He talks of the high wire act that marketers face with the ebb and flow of the pandemic, where hope turns to despair as the virus reemerges and hope incches back.
He addresses the "new normal" of the workplace, and the challenges of keeping the agency focused. Trained and inspired in the home/ office hybrid.
And he speaks about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace and explains the recently launched training program for people of varian backgrounds.
A longtime volunteer in the not-for-profit sector,John says that commitment to community action and philanthropy is essential for both brands and for each of in our lives. John lives this credo as the Chairman of the Red Cross of Greater New York.
Great, inspiring conversation. Thank you, John.
Thank you to our series sponsor TransUnion.
TV measurement is changing quickly as consumption is moving from linear TV to vast numbers of streamers. The legacy models of age and demo are not adequate. have been evolving fast with several new entrants i the industry.
How measurement is changing and what lies ahead is basis of two conversations with industry leaders hosted by industry consultant Jon Watts. Jon speaks with Jo Kinsella of TV Squared and Jonathan Steuer of VieoAmp.
We are kicking off the the new season with my chat with Wenda Harris Millard, one of the most innovative, inspiring leaders we know.
Wenda has a stellar record of achievements from her work at DoubleClick, Ziff Davis, Yahoo and Martha Stewart Omnimedia where was co-CEO. She joined Michael Kassan twelve years ago as Vice Chairman and COO to build the powerhouse consultancy MediaLink.
Not slowing down, she is hard at work at at MediaLink at a number of other projects. I am happy we could catch up.
In our chat, she covers the accelerated transformation of digital media, the emergence of identity-based solutions and their impact on outcomes.
She shares her thoughts and experiences as woman mentor, advising many women on how to navigate the extraordinary pressures of family and career during Covid.
Hey, I hope you are well and enjoying the summer.
All is well here. We are going to slow down a bit for the second part of August and ramp up fast after Labor Day.
We are taking a break from the BeetCast. We are finishing up the season with this episode and will be back on September 13.
And what a way to end this series with our season final with Lou Paskalis.
Lou, as many of you know, is a visionary marketer. A longtime executive in financial services with senior media investment posts at American Express and at Bank of America, he has not only led his companies in innovation but has been a guide to the entire industry though is participation in industry groups including MMA, his speaking at industry conferences and via his popular, must follow Twitter feed @LouPas
Lou left Bank of America recently. He’s taking a much need break and I am sure he will be doing something major soon. Can’t wait to hear.
I am grateful that Lou took the time to speak with me for this no holds bar conversation on the state of digital media, the future of the media agency, what he sees as the lack of responsibility at Facebook around disinformation - and the imperative for brands to support journalism.
A great conversation and surely a high point in the BeetCast and a great way to end the season. Thanks Lou for this and for all you do to lead our industry. And thanks for being a support of my work of so many years. It means a lot.
And a huge thanks to our series sponsor Mediaocean. Really appreciate your partnership.
And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Welcome to this episode of the BeetCast.
Hope you are well and enjoying the summer.
We are finishing up this season in fine form with two leading figures in our industry:
This week’s guest is Laura Desmond and on August 9 we publish our season finale my chat with Lou Paskalis.
Great to catch up with Laura, to unpack her incredibly successful career in private equity and in advisory roles post agency life.
Laura was one of the youngest CEOs when appointed to lead SMG globally in 2008, but that was only the first of many marks she has made on the agency and communications business since. She is regarded throughout the industry as a game-changer and a true innovator
She is an operating partner at Providence Equity Capital, a prominent private equity firm. She is also the founder and CEO of Eagle Vista Partners, a strategic advisory and venture investing firm serving the marketing, technology and digital industries
She serves on the board of DoubleVerify, where she was the interim CEO. Laura played a central role in guiding the company’s public offering. In our chat, she talks about the process of going public and what she learned and why it was the right move DoubleVerify.
In this expansive interview, she speaks about the prospects for an open web, the rising value of identity, the promise of CTV, the importance of dynamic creative optimization and how she would guide the media agency model.
Great conversation. Thank you Laura.
And thank you Mediaocean for sponsoring this season of the the BeetCast.
I hope you enjoy the episode.
Editors Note: After the August 9 convo with Lou, our next episode will drop on September 13.
For this week’s episode, I am happy to chat with Matt Seiler. Many of you know Matt as the longtime CEO of IPG Mediabrands and later at Dentsu where he was President of Brand Solutions.
An innovator who saw the transformation of the media business to programmatic, Matt has taught and inspired many of us in the industry.
Now Matt is guiding individual careers as a head-hunter with the global executive recruiting firm Raines International.
In our chat, he talks about the value of human capital in the advertising industry and the challenges that remain in hiring and recruiting talent.
He also addresses the challenges of a post Covid workplace and his suggestions on what companies need to do to retain and nurture staff.
For years, we’ve covered Roku and it never ceases to be an amazing story: It has emerged as a huge force in the TV industry’s transformation to streaming.
It is a handy device and system for consumers to find what they want, a programming platform with original content and a powerhouse advertising platform
Roku has just wrapped up its Upfront negotiations. The company tells Adweek that first-time advertisers make up some 42 percent of the new commitments. Meanwhile some 95 percent of current advertisers are re-upping
This week’s guest is Roku’s Andrew Conroy, who heads agency partnerships. A five-year veteran, Andrew speaks to his early days at the a very scrappy advertising operation to what has become a global giant.
In this wide-ranging conversation, he speaks to advertiser needs around more real-time analytics and cross platform measurement. Many of these tools are in place at Roku, but more are needed, he says.
Great conversation.
Thank you Andrew
And thank you to our #BeetCast sponsor Mediaocean
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.
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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."
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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)."
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service.
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.
Today we kick off our second season with our new sponsor in Mediaocean. A huge thanks for the continuing partnership.
Our guest today is Nicolle Pangis, CEO of Ampersand, the cable TV sales and data company owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox. More on Ampersand and its expanding business in my chat with Nicolle.
Nicolle is one of the most accomplished media innovators we know. She started her career at 24/7 RealMedia, moved on to and Xaxis and then to GroupM in senior positions. In 2018 she joined NCC Media as CEO. The company was later rebranded a Ampersand.
Happy to have Scott Schiller on this episode of the BeetCast.
Scott is a media pioneer, leader and teacher. Many of you know him from his role at NBC Universal as Executive VP of Advertising. He is a former chairman of the IAB.
Presently, Scott serves as Global Chief Commercial Officer of the ENGINE Group, a global advertising and marketing services firm.
In addition to his “day job,” For the past four years, Scott taught media studies to undergrads at New York University.
In our chat he explains how much he enjoys teaching and speaks to the value of being connected to his students to better understand attitudes and trends.
In our chat, Scott talks about the big transformation in television, the changing make-up of the UpFronts, the growth of programmatic in TV and the role of private marketplaces.
Finally, he calls on his colleagues in the media industry to embrace change. Great conversation.
About the BeetCast and Our Next Season!
This episode marks the end of our first season of the BeetCast sponsored by Tru Optik. I wanted to thank Andre Swanston, Matt Spiegel and the great crew at Tru Optik and its parent company Transunion for sponsoring the launch and first season of the BeetCast.
It has really grown in influence and popularity and I really enjoyed doing it. It was Andre’s idea for a podcast and I am forever grateful to him!
A special thanks to our podcast producer E. James Ford.
Happy to say our next season begins in May with our new sponsor MediaOcean.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a TransUnion company.
I am so delighted to welcome my dear friend Tracey Scheppach to this episode of the #BeetCast.
I call her the “mother of addressable TV”. Well, she didn’t exactly invent addressable TV but she was by all accounts the first buyer of the medium.
She was deeply involved with pilot projects in Colorado and Alabama in some twenty years ago. In our chat, she recalls those early days and her move to Starcom in 2005 to head the agency’s advance TV practice.
In 2016, she left Starcom to start her own company which is a boutique addressable TV buying agency and an industry consultancy. It is called Matter More Media.
In our conversation, Tracey talks about the evolution of addressable TV over the past 20 years. She speaks of her disappointment that its scope has been limited, increasingly by new “walled gardens of data” now in control of TV manufacturers. She shares her mantra: DATA MUST BE FREE.
We also talks about measurement and the importance of understanding the impact of creative.
The most predictive signal for economic action is search and it's the gateway to all lower funnel activities, says Kevin Krim, CEO of EDO, a data company that correlates television advertising with search.
I’ve covered Kevin’s work over the past 10 years in his top digital leadership roles at Bloomberg and CNBC.
We’ve spoken many times about the changes of TV news from linear to a digital media. It’s been a fascinating sector to cover and Kevin has been way in front of it for many years.
Since 2105, he has headed EDO, a TV data firm that allows programmers and advertisers the tools to understand the outcome of TV ads by understanding Web search. The company works with many leading programmers. Recently, it announced its newest partnership with Univision.
Separately, Kevin and his wife Marina founded an incredible non-profit organization called Choose Creativity. It is an educational initiative that empowers children and adults to build resilience, creative confidence, and social-emotional skills through engagement. It is being widely adopted. And is particularly valued during the pandemic.
As Kevin explains in this interview, the organization was founded in the wake of the terrible loss of his two children. It’s an amazing, inspiring story. I hope you will visit ChooseCreativy.org to learn more, and will join me in making a contribution.
This week, our podcast guest is with Gila Wilensky, President of of Xaxis US.
She was appointed to the head the agency one year ago, coming from GroupM’s Essence where she was Head of Media Activation for North America.
In 2013, Gila joined the growing Google account at Essence and built a team to run Google’s SEM and biddable media efforts. Gila also helped Google codify its global Adwords and DoubleClick best practices.
She grew Essence’s social practice by 50x between 2013 and 2016.
In this interview, she talks about her path to leadership and the efforts to bring diversity, equality and inclusion to Xaxis. She speaks about the focus of outcomes at Xaxis as a core value of the programmatic unit of GroupM. She covers AI and the future of of a more efficient programmatic ecosystem.
This year marks the agency's 10th year anniversary.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a TransUnion company.
For many of us, the issue of hate against Asian Americans hasn’t been talk about. But through hate crimes, fostered by the pandemic and economic strains, this has become a pressing matter for us to understand and address, particularly for us in the marketing and media industries.
To put this in perspective is one our industry’s leading voices, Yin Woon Rani who is our guest in this episode of the BeetCast.
Yin was born in Malaysia, raised in Singapore. She emigrated to the United States where she attended Yale. She went on to senior positions at IPG, the Campbell Soup Company and most recently took over as CEO of the nation’s milk industry marketing group, known to many by by its iconic slogan “Got Milk”.
Yin explains that for most Asians, assimilation has been the top priority. Asians want to be “invisible” she says. But racism has been part of the Asian American story and it’s become impossible to ignore.
She is involved with industry advocacy groups including Stop Asian American Pacific Islander Hate, known by the hashtag #StopAAPIHate and #StopAsianHate.
Yin addresses the needs for DEI in the marketing industry for all marginalized groups and suggests real change will come as companies become truly inclusive and as those changes bring better business outcomes.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a TransUnion company.
Alysia Borsa, President of Digital at Meredith Corporation, the giant women’s lifestyle publisher, discuses how she is navigating the post cookie world in this episode of the BeetCast with guest host Matt Spiegel, EVP for Media at Transunion.
She explains the rising value of contextual marketing, the need for unified identity solutions, and “clean rooms.” Addressing the upside of the pandemic for Meredith, she says the publisher's editorial focus on home and family has become more relevant during these times.
Since its inception, the distribution of podcasts has relied on a downloaded file, sent to users via RSS feed. But that system has limitations in understanding consumption. It's akin to delivering a magazine but not knowing if it was opened or read.
Spotify's platform for podcast distribution is streaming as it is for music. The company has invested heavily in the podcast field.
According to eMarketer, this year, Spotify will pass Apple in the number of listeners to podcasts in the U.S. The evolution of podcast to streaming will fundamentally change the value of the medium, says Sean Kegelman, Global Head of Data and Audience Solutions at Spotify.
In this episode of the #BeetCast podcast, Kegelman also explains the value of the Spotify's listeners' music preferences and playlists in enhancing listening experiences and by effectively identifying users for advertiser messages.
In our chat, Kegelman reflects the evolution of digital media spanning some 23 years, as seen from his work at Digitas to Vivaki and Spotify.
The introduction of big, complex streaming video services, which are not interoperable, are creating new closed ecosystems or "walled gardens" - presenting new challenges to buyers.
This is one of the many topics covered in this episode of the #BeetCast with guest host Jesse Redniss and guest Ashley Swartz. They also covered video pricing, inventory, privacy and data. Lots to unpack from these industry veterans and long time colleagues.
Swartz if founder and CEO of Furious Corp, an TV advertising infrastructure play. Redniss, a longtime advance TV executive at NBCU and Turner/Warner Media, co-founded Brave Ventures, a media consulting and advisory firm
Data will redefine the value of media brands and the efficiency of media buys for marketers. To make this happen, data collaboration is essential, says Matt Spiegel, EVP of the Media Vertical at TransUnion, in this Beet.TV podcast moderated by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp and a regular contributor to Beet.TV
From a unified identity graph, to "clean rooms" to establishing an interoperable "marketplaces" - all the while in a privacy compliant, are some of the industry future.
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.
The events business has been crushed by the pandemic and physical events won't come back until next Fall. As events producers and publishers shift to virtual events, the results have been mixed, observes Brian Morrissey, long time editor-in-chief of Digiday, who stepped down from his position in October.
He suggests that events scheduled this Spring as physical events will inevitably become virtual. In my podcast with Brian, he points to the upside of virtual events of allowing more extensive programming with speakers being more readily available via a Zoom call from home.
On the downside is the business imperative for sponsors who expect in-person networking. And admission prices are nearly free now, making the business of event registration problematic. There are too many events and they are becoming "commoditized" he observes.
But for business publishers who retain a close relationship with a particular industry sector, there are a plethora of other monetization opportunities.
Also in the session, he shares his views on media trade publishing, which he suggests need to be more tech focused vs. personality driven. And he reflects on the trend of out of work journalists who have embraced micro publishing on Substack. He doesn't see it as sustainable for most.
We caught up with Brian in Miami where he is evaluating his next moves. His platform at the moment is his weekly newsletter call The Rebooting. If you are keen to see what's next in business publishing sign up.
While the media industry's enthusiasm for addressable TV is building, it will remain a relatively small part of the TV advertising pie, says Dave Morgan, CEO and Founder of Simulmedia in this podcast.
This episode of the BeetCast is hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO and founder of Furious Corp and a longtime Beet.TV contributor.
Linear TV provides the reach and value that advertisers want. Furthermore steaming is not for everyone as a third of the country doesn't have fixed broadband, Morgan notes.
While overall viewership for linear TV will continue to decline, CPM's will rise and the overall marketing spend on TV will remain relatively stable, he predicts.
Consumers can't be truly "identified" via various data sets. Their feelings and moods can vary as much as the the profile of another person. The key to identity in marketing is to reach a consumer who "belongs," who opts in by providing first party data, says Rishad Tobaccowala, longtime senior advertising executive at the Publicis Groupe, now an independent advisor, author and industry prognosticator.
He says this sort of permission marketing is essential for success . And there are lessons for publishers and writers like himself who have found greater traction in the process subscription. For his weekly substack newsletter, he notes that the sign-up process has yielded far great impact for his newsletter versus publishing on social networks where attention is largely built around various algorithms.
In this episode of the Beet.TV podcast, the "BeetCast, he talks about his book Restoring the Soul of Business and how it has proven prescient for the era the COVID 19 pandemic including the longterm implications of work from home. He predicts that a full 50 percent of white collar jobs will be done at home. But he warns that work from home has several key limitations.
He shares his advice for the future of advertising which needs to be staffed by a new wave of creative talent, he urges.
In a new data-led marketing world, driven by technology, marketers are being left behind. The obsolescence of marketing has begun, declares Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer and President, Healthcare Business, Mastercard, in this excerpt from an upcoming podcast on Beet.TV
It is imperative that marketers understand AI, Augmented Reality and other emerging technologies to remain relevant. Already the role of CMO has eliminated from major companies, he notes.
Much of Rajamannar’s thesis around the crisis in marketing and a way forward is laid out in his forthcoming book: Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow’s Consumers. It comes out in February, published by Harper Collins
He wasn’t happy with the circumstances of his departure from WPP in 2018, the giant advertising holding company he founded.
With S4 Capital, he is proving a point: he can create an agile, digital-only marketing enterprise, says Sir Martin Sorrell in this interview. S4 now has a market capitalization of about $2.5 billion.