For years media agencies pushed themselves away from creatives at advertising agencies. No longer is that a positive. “I happy that we are sitting closer with creatives,” says Christine Merrifield, president of investment and activation of MediaVest USA, in speaking an an online video panel at OMMA Global. “Years ago we broke away from creative. We need to understand all the creative aspects.” Merrifield says the creative piece continues to be a “challenge" with all the creative executions to consider. Not only that but there are other issues. For example, online video marketers' individual messaging continues to …

Marla Skiko, EVP, Director Digital Innovation, SMV Group, emphasized that mobile is now just part of what SMV does because the medium has become so pervasive. “The third screen really is becoming the first thing we think about,” she said, the way digital years ago became integrated widely into ad campaigns and marketing efforts. Joe Cianciotto, Executive Creative Director of DDB and Chief Digital Officer of NY, DDB, said the agency does more work in digital overall than TV and print. As part of that, DDB is building mobile expertise into all areas rather than keep it siloed in …

Speaking at OMMA Global at Advertising Week this afternoon, TubeMogul's Co-founder and CEO Brett Wilson defined "premium" for online video. Considering how hot the topic is, Wilson's definition was surprisingly simple.

When it comes to mobile commerce, Chasin said comScore thinks m-commerce will hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter, would be first $10B quarter to date. He highlights key themes for fourth quarter according to what he calls the “4 S’s.” -Social commerce: Pinterest now reaches 44M U.S. consumers: 18M are mobile only -Smartphones: New iPhone 5C may help improve penetration among late adopters. -Sit-back Shopping: Through 70M tablets, which have higher avg. spend. -Showrooming: 40% of smartphone users have showroomed, with price motivating the for more than half. M-commerce is growing at a 28% clip annually compared to 14% …

Speaking at OMMA Mobile on Monday, Josh Chasin, chief research officer, comScore, began his talk by presenting a raft of data about how consumers are using their mobile devices. For starters, we’re up to 140 smartphones in the U.S., about half of all mobile phones. There are 70 million tablet users—it’s the fastest adopted technology since….the cell phone. More than half (52%) of digital time spent is on a smartphone or tablet. Apps dominate, with 85% of time spent versus 15% in mobile Web. There are 15 million mobile users who access Web only via mobile, with three-fifths of that …

How are brands addressing what everyone agrees is a serious shortage of technical talent? Gilt Groupe, for one, is doing some serious in-house grooming to fill its quota of quantitatively-minded marketers and engineers -- the latter of whom have become as important to marketing as marketers themselves. So Alexis Maybank, founder and chief strategy officer at Gilt, told OMMA Global attendees on Monday morning. "It's the most difficult challenge," Maybank said. And, the challenge is hardly specific to Gilt, according to Nancy Hill, President and CEO of the AAAA. Regarding young entrants into the agency world, Hill said: "They think …

Sure, everybody loves AT&T's "It's Not Complicated" campaign, featuring that straight-faced guy grilling eager kids about this and that. But, no brand campaign could have singlehandedly righted the telecom's ship after several difficult years, according to Esther Lee, SVP of brand marketing and advertising at AT&T. "It would be great to say that our marketing and branding is totally responsible for [AT&T's] turnaround, but... a lot of it has to do with improvements in our network," Lee told attendees of OMMA Global on Monday morning. "That's gone through a major transformation." If you don't recall, not long after the first …

Amid a surging sea of social media bits and bites, how can brands stand out? For starters, "Negativity works really well!" according to Robin Monheit, Senior Social Media Manager at Hearst Corporation. One of Monheit's favorite headlines of late guaranteed clickers a peak at the "ungliest, craziest wedding dresses" they could imagine. "Definitely going to click on that!" she addmitted during MediaPost's Social Media Insider Summit, on Friday. Also, addressing readers directly as "you" can be effective, Monheit noted. Oh, and you can't go wrong mentioning Ryan Gosling. "The ten funniest faces that Ryan Gosling made yesterday?! ... I'm definitely …