• 10 Reasons Why Branded Content Belongs On Smart TVs
    Brands looking to develop more meaningful consumer connections are turning to branded content to increase engagement, reach new audiences, and convert immersive brand experiences into sales. A fusion of advertising and entertainment, branded content has been developed by a broad range of leading brands; everyone from BMW to Marks & Spencer and Chipotle. Incidentally, the latter recently won the first ever branded content Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Lions Festival for its efforts. To date, branded content has strictly been used as a form of online marketing; however, given the rise of Internet connected TVs, its time it made …
  • How Do You Get To Google Street? Q&A with Serent's Nadim Homsany
    I met Nadim Homsany of Serent Capital at the recent OMMA Response conference, where he spoke about the future of online investments. Nadim is a VP at Serent and leads the company's efforts in tech-enabled and digital marketing investments.
  • How Modern Is Modern Family?
    So "Modern Family" is the favorite comedy of the Romney family. So says the Republican nominee himself. Of course campaign consultants, trying to signal to moderate voters that he had no particular hang-ups on social issues, may have advised him to make this claim. But it might have been one of those rare cases where a politician actually spoke truthfully about his personal preferences. Regardless of whether the Romneys actually watch "Modern Family," millions of others do. With DVR viewing added in, it's typically the most watched show of the week, often beating even football. And of course it continues …
  • 'General Hospital' Leads A Sudden Revitalization Of Daytime Drama
    In my last column I lamented the disappointing state of prime-time drama on the broadcast networks, asserting that the quality of dramatic series on basic and pay cable was making it increasingly difficult to be satisfied by traditional network fare. But here's a pro-broadcast caveat: At present, the quality of the remaining daytime dramas on ABC, NBC and CBS is better than it has been in a very long time.
  • How The Obama Campaign Changed TV Advertising Forever
    While Nate Silver has soaked up the post-election "triumph of the quants" spotlight, how Obama's team used data and science just may have the most lasting impact on advertising and marketing. Particularly telling was the use of data in the campaign's television advertising strategy, which represented a shift away from tactics that political campaigns have used since the 1980s. Estimates from the Washington Post and others put the Obama campaign's TV spend at close to $500 million. If you look at Obama the president as Obama the brand, it's the largest scale implementation of data-denominated television advertising that any brand …
  • Drama Report: 'The Good Wife,' 'Grey's Anatomy' Still Broadcast's Best
    Thank goodness for CBS' "The Good Wife" and ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," arguably the only veteran series at the moment that prove broadcast can consistently deliver compelling quality drama that is competitive with the best of basic cable. (I'm still waiting for any of this fall's new broadcast dramas to earn similar high praise.)
  • The Lazy, Hazy, Crazy TV Viewer
    very once in a while when I'm flipping around the TV, I'll come across a syndicated repeat of "The Office." And because it's my favorite show, I'll continue to watch it to the end, whether there's five or 25 minutes left. While commonplace, this behavior is profoundly irrational. After all, if I really wanted to watch "The Office" I have a full set of DVDs to choose from. Instead, I'll watch the syndicated show because it's the path of least resistance. It's possible I'm the laziest viewer in the history of television, but more likely there's something in the very …
  • 'The Walking Dead' Delivers One Of The Most Powerful Hours Of Scripted TV This Year
    I thought my 2012 year-end ten-best list was good to go until last Sunday, when I was realized I was going to have to make room for AMC's "The Walking Dead," which I planned to include among my runners-up. That realization came as I watched "Killer Within," arguably the most powerful episode in the series' three-year history and one of the most impactful hours of television this year. I'm still shaken by what I saw. I haven't been so rattled by a drama series since that game-changing episode from the fourth season of FX's "Sons of Anarchy" in which gang …
  • Surviving Sandy With 'Old' Media
    We think we are connected all the time. We comfort ourselves that with all of our virtual and technological devices we can keep in touch any time, any place -- and, with the ability to access the Internet, we can get news easily and effortlessly no matter what catastrophe befalls us. Well, throw that idea out the window.
  • The Smart TV Viewer's Bill Of Rights
    Silicon Valley innovation has given television executives plenty to worry about. In my years with NBC-at the network as well as in the station group-we worried about cable splintering our audience. We worried about DVRs skipping our commercials and high definition revealing our wrinkles. We never worried whether people knew how to work their TV sets. However in the new world of connected TV, finding and watching Internet-delivered shows is a challenge, even for tech-savvy viewers. So in addition to fretting about all the things we can't control, we now need to worry about one thing we can: complicated smart …
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