Advanced Television: The Quest for Universal Addressability

Dan Balis is Senior Director of Product Management for Emerging Platforms at OpenX, the world’s leading ad exchange for data and identity. At OpenX, Dan leads product strategy and development for emerging formats and CTV. Prior to joining OpenX, Dan held product leadership roles at Brightcove and Viacom, with 15+ years of experience launching ad-supported video products at scale.

Maribel Becker is Vice President of Addressable Partnerships at Paramount.  In this role, she orchestrates the collaboration needed to enable addressable advertising across linear, digital and connected TV endpoints.  Her approach to developing successful partnerships is informed by her previous experience managing ad operations and partner ad integrations across ViacomCBS, 10+ years building global ad tech account management, sales operations, and product support practices at DoubleClick, Google and FreeWheel, as well as time agency-side developing and delivering online advertising solutions.  

Elsa Castro Blumberg is Vice President of Client Analytics for DIRECTV Advertising. As part of the DIRECTV Analytics & Insights team, Elsa works closely with agency partners and clients to demonstrate how Addressable technology helps advertisers connect with key audiences while effectively managing reach and frequency.  Elsa delivers consultative solutions for client campaign objectives for all budgets and is responsible for audience estimates for linear TV inventory, primary research and thought leadership, and brand health campaign measurement for DIRECTV and DIRECTV Stream products and services. She also manages the team responsible for activation and attribution efforts for the Tune-In vertical. 

Prior to joining DIRECTV, Elsa held Vice President positions at NBC Universal and FOX Cable Networks, leading research and measurement and establishing category expertise of consumer behavior within industry verticals.

Elsa Castro Blumberg graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science degree in Radio-Television-Film.

Anthony Bursae is a Senior Director of Product at Integral Ad Science (IAS), a leading global media measurement and optimization platform. Anthony is primarily responsible for the Connected TV (CTV) measurement roadmap across advertiser, publisher, and media platform product lines. Prior to IAS, Anthony held lead roles across client services and product at companies such as DigitalGlobe and PlaceIQ.

Ray (Jiayi) Cao is the Global Head of Product Solutions and Operations for TikTok Monetization Product, the leading short-form video platform designed to inspire creativity and bring joy. He’s responsible for building innovative long-term product solutions and setting the global strategic product vision for the commercial team. Ray builds products that provide brands and marketers the tools to be creative storytellers and meaningfully engage with the TikTok community. Prior to TikTok, Ray was the Commercialization Lead at Google where he provided strategic commercial leadership, conducted analysis, and determined how best to scale B2B solutions in the go-to-market strategy for Google Shopping Ads.

George Castrissiades has more than 15 years working in digital video advertising tech and operations and currently serves as VP, CTV Product for iSpot.TV. Previously holding leadership roles at Roku, Innovid, Vice Media, Crackle, and most recently YouTube as Global Product Lead for CTV, it was his prior work as a customer of iSpot that facilitated a transition to a strategic product development role within the group.

Daniel Church is a savvy and strategic product leader with nearly a decade of experience driving advertising innovation across the TV industry. One part builder and one part strategist, Church currently serves as the Head of Advanced TV Product at Beachfront Media, where he leads the company’s groundbreaking endeavor to uniformly connect cable, broadcast, and connected television within modern advertising marketplaces. A market-renowned expert in advanced TV infrastructure and high-frequency ad trading, Church has authored several patent-pending technologies around Advanced TV. Prior to his role at Beachfront, Church served in similar roles at FreeWheel, StickAds.tv (Acquired by FreeWheel), and Smaato. 

Mike joined Essence to lead the Converged Advanced TV practice in 2020, coming from the world of adtech, where he previously led TV/OTT strategy at MediaMath and was one of the first to help build out streaming dynamic creative at Brightline. Once at Essence, it wasn’t long before his role was expanded into a dual-hat position within GroupM to bring together disparate parts of the business and drive the Advanced TV practice forward, moving it away from purely linear or digital, toward an audience-first approach.

Mike has helped push clients across GroupM to test and scale new Advanced TV solutions across linear, addressable, and streaming channels. He has also been instrumental in creating and leading new offerings between GroupM and various industry-leading companies, including iSpot, OpenAP, and Amobee.

Mike continues to push forward best-in-class advanced TV solutions, partnerships, and innovative ways to reach viewers across premium video solutions, and is a veteran of the Advanced TV speaking circuit and a NYC TV Week 40 under 40 honoree.

With more than a decade of experience in the ad tech industry, Rob Hazan leads omnichannel product strategy, development, and delivery at Index Exchange.

Prior to joining Index, Rob held roles across the buy and sell sides of the programmatic ecosystem at Google and AppNexus (now Xandr). While at Google, Rob served as a Product Manager, responsible for publisher tagging, ads latency, and ensuring compliance with data regulation (e.g. GDPR and CCPA).

Earlier in his career, Rob worked as a software engineer and business analyst at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. He holds a degree in Computer Science and Finance from Princeton University. Today, he lives in the Boston area with his wife, two kids, and their dog.

Jounce Media is the industry leader in programmatic supply chain management and is trusted by the world’s largest marketers, media companies, and advertising technology platforms to enable high efficiency programmatic trades. Chris Kane founded Jounce Media in 2015.

Chris was previously Chief of Staff to the CEO and CFO at AOL. Prior to AOL, Chris managed a portfolio of enterprise accounts at Turn, a pioneer in the DSP category. He started his career as a management consultant at Oliver Wyman where he focused on the converging media and technology sectors.

Ben leads PubMatic’s global Product Marketing team, which acts as the two-way bridge between the firm’s technology and commercial marketplace. Before PubMatic, Ben ran product, marketing and operations at companies like Twitter and Meredith. He brings over a decade of media experience across tech companies, publishers, advertisers and agencies.

Anthony Katsur is a media technology veteran with more than twenty-five years of executive leadership and technical experience at innovative technology companies in the digital media industry.

Most recently, Anthony was SVP, Strategy, Operations and Corporate Development at Nexstar Media Group, Inc., the largest local broadcaster in the United States. Anthony was responsible for overseeing strategy, technology platforms and corporate development across Nexstar’s portfolio of digital assets.

Prior to Nexstar, Anthony served as President of Sonobi, where he implemented their product and go to market strategy around people-based marketing. Anthony recruited, and led highly effective teams while driving strategic partnerships with leading media companies, agencies and brands.

Prior to Sonobi, Anthony held global leadership roles at Rubicon Project as EVP of Business Operations and General Manager of Buyer Cloud. He also held global executive roles at MediaMath and Maxifier, where he served as CEO. Earlier in his career, he joined DoubleClick via the acquisition of NetGravity where he lead multiple engineering divisions and also fulfilled several product leadership and general management roles.

Anthony is an active participant at industry conferences, speaking about the latest ends in advertising at the National Association of Broadcasters, AdAge’s Brand Summit, Advertising Week, Broadcasting & Cable, AdMonsters and GABBCON. He has been quoted on industry trends and provided thought leadership in The Wall Street Journal, AdAge, Adweek, AdExchanger, MediaPost, Econsultancy and Digiday, among others.

As the Chief Products & Services Officer and President of Nexus for GroupM North America, JiYoung oversees the integrated performance services and products spanning search, social, programmatic and commerce. JiYoung is also responsible for accelerating client success and growth initiatives through market-leading client delivery and innovative technology-enabled services.    

Throughout her extensive and intensive 20+ year career in the media and advertising industry, Kim has led cross-functional marketing and technology teams in promoting new offerings in the digital and mobile space; as well as leading agencies in their pursuit of defining the agency of the future as being technology-enabled, digitally native, and outcome-focused.

Before joining GroupM, JiYoung was the Chief Digital Officer for Carat US (dentsu), responsible for infusing people-based data and cross-channel digital planning for complex, portfolio brands. Prior to Carat US, JiYoung served as Global Chief Client Officer for Reprise and Head of Performance for UM, tasked with integrating performance capabilities within the overall planning, activation and optimization process for key clients.

JiYoung’s passion for her work in media, mobile, and platform brands has garnered her industry recognition including the Adweek 50 Media, Marketing and Tech Leader in 2020 and the Adweek Media All-Stars in 2014.

C.J. Leonard is the VP of Platform Operations at IRIS.TV. She has extensive knowledge of ad tech and programmatic advertising from all parts of the ecosystem. Prior to joining IRIS.TV C.J. had previously worked with publishers, broadcasters, and technology vendors and ran the advertising technology and operations with companies including Magnite, The Weather Group, Tegna, NBCU, Frankly, CBS and Tribune.

For nearly 12 years, Curtis Light has built software throughout Google’s advertising platforms, including Display & Video 360, AdSense, and YouTube Ads.  With a strong interest in combating ad fraud, he actively contributed to designing and authoring the app-ads.txt standard, along with contributions to IAB Tech Lab security working groups.  Within Google, he works on various anti-abuse initiatives.

Masoud Loghmani leads the product teams responsible for brand advertising products at TikTok. Prior to TikTok Masoud led product initiatives focused on brand advertisers at YouTube /Alphabet. Prior to Alphabet, as a serial entrepreneur/intrapreneur, Masoud was the founder/co-founder of three technology companies, and also was the founder of Accenture Open Innovation group. Masoud graduated from Kellogg School of Management with an MBA with a focus on marketing. He received a Bachelor of Science in Physics from University of Maryland at College Park with focus on Chaos and Fractals.

Kristine Lopez is a Senior Product Manager at HUMAN Security where her remit is to provide the best-in-class fraud protection to the digital advertising community, with a particular focus on emerging surfaces. Before joining HUMAN, she was a Product Manager in Akamai’s internal incubator working to solve customers’ problems beyond delivery. Prior to Akamai, she was a Senior Manager of Yield Analytics at Verizon Media where she spent time across the DSP, SSP and Owned & Operated sides of the business over her tenure.

She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University where she earned a B.S. in Applied Mathematics & Statistics. Based in the greater Boston area, Kristine spends her free time chasing after her many (4) children.

Amit Nigam is a seasoned product and partnerships executive with a demonstrated history of working in the media, marketing, and advertising industry. Currently, Nigam serves as the Vice President of Product at Beachfront Media, where he leads the sell-side ad server’s Product management team and drives the vision, strategy, and execution of the company’s key roadmap initiatives. Prior to joining Beachfront, Nigam served in executive product positions at ad tech companies Perion and Eyeview. Nigam has also held key media buying and strategy roles at OMD, Horizon Media, and Maxus, working closely with leading brands including PepsiCo, Kraft, and Arm & Hammer.

Dr. Neal Richter has worked in the software industry since 1996 and since 1999 focused on data science, machine learning, and AI applications. He is currently Director, Advertising Science for Amazon DSP. He oversees a team of data scientists and engineers focused on RTB bidding algorithms and systems across display, mobile, audio, and video. Prior roles include Chief Scientist at SpotX, a streaming CTV ad platform; Chief Technical Officer at Rakuten Marketing; and CTO and Chief Scientist at the Rubicon Project.

Within Tech Lab, Neal has served on the Board going back to the initial incarnation as the IAB Ad Technology Advisory Council. He has been a contributor to the development of the OpenRTB protocol, the deal_id, OpenRTB Native, ads.txt, ads.cert, sellers.json, and other associated standards.

Neal grew up in a log cabin in a rural area of Montana and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Montana State University.

When not sifting through data or designing high-scale systems and learning algorithms, Neal enjoys fly fishing, skiing, and living in the Rockies in Salt Lake City Utah with his wife, four teenagers, and an extremely furry dog.

Davide Rosamilia is the Director, Product Management at ID5. He has nearly fifteen years of experience in adtech, initially in client services and then transitioning to helping firms to improve their product offering.

Prior to ID5, Davide worked at Tapad as their Director of Solution Engineering in Europe. Davide has experience working in-house with a number of agencies such as Tradedoubler, Clickpoint and GroupM, in addition to working as an external consultant with numerous companies across the globe.

Shailley brings several years of product management experience in digital advertising at Yahoo and Say Media building products for mobile advertising, ad operations, targeting solutions, and integrating data platforms. Shailley has supported and worked with multiple IAB initiatives in the past, namely MRAID and Mobile Rising Stars specifications. At Yahoo, he worked on creating innovative ad experiences for mobile and tablet platforms as well as native formats. Shailley has a diverse background as a product leader, consultant, and entrepreneur building and sustaining high performing teams at both large organizations as well as venture funded startups like Paypal, Yahoo, Say Media, Serus, Accenture, and PwC. Shailley has an MBA and Chemical engineering degrees.

Tom has a diverse background including managing broadcast properties for Clear Channel/iHeart, served as the COO of Marathon Media a broadcast spectrum engineering and operating company, he was co-founder and served as president of a marathon running company, owned and operated an automotive dealer group, has been the COO and CRO of several digital start-ups including Comcast’s Vehix.com, and has been with Scripps for over 10 years. 

At Scripps, he joined the company leading digital revenue for the newspaper, broadcast, and their digital marketing services businesses.

Today as the VP of revenue strategy, he oversees revenue strategy & innovation as well as indirect revenue and addressable linear advertising for Scripps 61 local news brands, their 9 broadcast networks, and direct to consumer brands. ,.

Tom lives in Park City Utah with his wife and commutes between Scripps New York and Cincinnati offices.

Andrew Tint leads SLING TV’s Programmatic and Device Partnerships team at DISH Media. In his role, Tint manages SLING TV’s programmatic and device partner revenue strategy and sales efforts across OEMs, SSPs and DSPs while supporting Holding Co initiatives.
Prior to DISH Media, Tint was an Account Director at SpotX where he managed SSP sales and strategy at the holding company level, and has also held roles at UM.
Andrew attended Kenyon College where he earned his Bachelor of Arts while working as the radio voice for all Kenyon Athletics. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, NY.

Chris is a Principal Software Engineer at Oracle Moat, the suite of measurement solutions offered by Oracle Advertising.  In this role he is responsible for supporting ad viewability measurement in in-app environments, including the Moat SDK and Open Measurement SDK. With that he is also focused on iOS development involving debugging of measurement by SDKs, expanding test coverage, and development of test apps. Chris also has been working on Oracle’s In-Game integrations, enabling tracking of ads in 3D-rendered environments, through prototyping, specification development, and backend implementation. Chris earned an Atrium Baccalaureus (AB) in economics from Princeton University. He lives in New York, NY.

As Vice President, Technical Operations at Extreme Reach, David is responsible for core media processing within ER platforms and facilities. With a career in Broadcasting and Telecommunications spanning four decades, David has led the introduction of several new technologies and paradigm shifts in the News and Entertainment industries. At ER he leads a team focused on operational efficiency, application of new technology, and process automation that have been a driving force in the growth of the business.

Joe Winograd is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Verance Corporation and has directed the company’s development of watermark technologies and solutions since 1995. Dr. Winograd led Verance’s efforts to establish the company’s technology as the industry standard for movies, television, and music and has guided its deployment in hundreds of millions of consumer electronics and entertainment products. He represents the company in multiple standards bodies and industry consortia and has been a featured presenter at numerous industry events.