I Want My CTV: AdvancedTV Tech

“If you know anything about television, you probably know Alan Wolk.” That’s how Adweek introduces Alan Wolk, the co-founder of TVREV, a leading media analyst firm, and the best-selling author of “Over The Top. How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry.”

Wolk has established himself as one of the industry’s most influential thought leaders, especially noted for his deep understanding of the intersection of streaming and advertising. As the creator of the acronym FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV), he has been instrumental in guiding TVREV to become a pivotal resource in the media industry, navigating the transformative shift to streaming.

His prowess extends to his widely acclaimed reports that have significantly impacted the industry. TVREV’s works on Local TV, the FAST ecosystem, and ACR data are particularly notable, offering incisive analyses and forward-thinking insights. These reports have not only shaped industry discussions but also provided clear, actionable intelligence for media professionals.

What sets Wolk apart is his unique ability to demystify complex ideas in a manner that’s easily understandable yet never oversimplified. This talent makes him a sought-after writer, speaker, and consultant, striking a rare balance between depth and accessibility in his communications.

As a contributing writer to Forbes, NextTV, StreamTV Insider, and other industry news sites, Wolk has been a voice of authority, interviewed and quoted by everyone from NPR to The New York Times. He is a regular guest on Cheddar TV, offering expert opinions on breaking stories in the media industry.

He regularly speaks about the future of television, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.

Barry has nearly 25 years’ international business and management experience at the intersection of marketing and technology, with the past 12 years in the programmatic space.

Barry has help senior leadership roles with Acxiom, Experian, Eyeota (acquired by Dun & Bradstreet), IponeWeb (acquired by Criteo) and is currently EVP of Adtech Services and General Manager of BidSwitch at Criteo.

Justin Adler-Swanberg is the Director of Product Management at HUMAN. Working on product strategy for HUMAN’s media business, Justin’s, focus is supporting and enhancing leadership in quality and compliance protections across the advertising landscape. Before joining HUMAN, Justin was the Director of Product Strategy, Quality, and Compliance and the Director of Marketplace Quality at MediaMath. Prior to MediaMath, Justin was Senior Manager of Supply and Network Quality at GroundTruth (formerly xAd).

Alexa is a product manager who works on identity solutions across Microsoft DSP and SSP platforms. She also has experience on the Monetize SSP product team working on publisher integrations, Prebid Server, and CTV solutions including video content metadata and CTV efficiency/monetization. Prior to working in product, she was a technical account manager who worked with publishers on their SSP integrations across formats and integration types.

Nada Bradbury is the Chief Executive Officer at AD-ID, the industry’s pre-eminent advertising
registry. AD-ID provides standardized identity management for ad creatives. Since joining in
January 2023, she has been the chief architect of the company’s transformation to ensure
advertising transparency and accountability in an increasingly digital ecosystem.

She has spent over two decades of her career in senior operating roles including strategy,
product development, marketing and commercial operations in the advertising, measurement
and media industries. Nada has a proven track record of implementing growth strategies,
overseeing complex strategic partnerships and creating value for employees and stakeholders
alike. She has a deep and holistic understanding of media and advertisers and how best to
serve them.

Nada previously served as Global Head of Partnerships at Nielsen where she led Nielsen’s data
initiatives and transformation to a big data first strategy. With deep expertise across identity,
viewing metrics, analytics and data science to support new and existing products and currencies
for customers across a large number of verticals, globally. Prior to that, she led strategy and
measurement products at NielsenIQ (previously known as ACNielsen).

Currently, Nada serves on the Advisory Board for the IAB Tech Lab Advanced TV Initiative.

Nada received her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in
marketing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Samantha Carr is a Product Manager at Publica, an innovator in CTV ad tech. She leads efforts across unified auctions, pod construction, campaign management, and audience targeting, delivering tools that help CTV publishers maximize revenue and elevate user experience.

Suvadip Choudhury is the Director of TV Partnerships at Alliant, where he forges data partnerships that shape the future of audience targeting, planning, and reach extension in Advanced TV. With over a decade of experience in advertising technology, Suvadip specializes in building strategic alliances across the programmatic and Advanced TV ecosystems, pushing the boundaries of innovation and capability development.

Throughout his career, Suvadip has tackled the industry’s challenges from multiple perspectives. On the supply side, he led publisher partnerships at Bounce Exchange and later managed DOOH demand partnerships at Place Exchange. His demand-side experience stems from his time at Beeswax (acquired by FreeWheel), where he scaled bidding infrastructure for top adtech companies.

Working with the full client roster across Publicis Media, Cullen Deady co-leads client enablement and education of PMX Lift, Publicis Media’s advanced TV practice. As Senior Vice President, he consults agency teams and clients on the advanced TV space to offer unique, proprietary buying solutions that combine linear and TV inventory, while serving as the PMX Lift lead for audience-based strategy and activation across various data sets and marketing technology. By positioning and selling the power of PMX Lift, Cullen has helped continually deliver year over year growth, driven by a combination of organic growth and new business wins.

Cullen joined Publicis back in March 2013 as an Associate at Starcom. There, he worked his way up through the ranks for 10 years, landing as Vice President of Audience Strategy prior to his current role. At Starcom, Cullen managed over $1B in client billings; owned marketing technology and audience workflows across multiple clients; led the agency’s client-dedicated Audience Strategy Center of Excellence, growing the team size by 50%; and was a champion of company culture and development of young talent.

Cullen’s dedication to owning the media and communications planning for numerous of Publicis’ top clients has led him to be a two-time Effie Award winner.

Born and raised in the western suburbs of Chicago, Cullen currently resides in Portland, Oregon to take full advantage of the Pacific Northwest lifestyle. Outside of work, you can find him taking his dog for a road trip around the region, hiking one of the many trails in his area, and checking out the newest craft brewery opening in the city.

Haritha is a Sr. Software Engineer at Amazon Ads with 7+ years of experience in the Supply Quality domain.

As the Managing Director and Head of Sales for Kinective Media by United Airlines, Aaron Gallagher is building a brand-new best-in-class sales and commercial team for the world’s first traveler and commerce media network from the world’s largest airline. Through Kinective Media, advertisers can map their customer’s journey, marketing to United’s customers before, during and after their travel journeys. The network has been custom-built on a foundation of technologies and partners, along with a broader set of data assets from the largest airline in the world, to enable premium brand advertisers to connect with a valuable audience, at scale.

Prior to Kinective Media, Aaron was leading the digital ad sales organization at Warner Bros. Discovery, where he played an integral role in merging the Discovery and Scripps Networks digital sales organizations and built a strategic ad sales and revenue strategy for the combined companies. And during his tenure at Time Inc., Aaron was in sales leadership roles at CNNMoney.com, People.com, and the corporate digital sales group.

Aaron graduated with a B.A. in English from the College of the Holy Cross and is a long time New Yorker.

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.

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.

Kristine Lopez is a Principal Product Manager at The Trade Desk, specializing in Marketplace Quality. With a career rooted in ad tech, she previously held leadership roles as Director of Product Management at IAS and HUMAN Security. Kristine’s professional journey also includes building ad tech innovations at Akamai and Yield Analytics at Verizon Media/AOL/Ad.com.

Kristine holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics & Statistics from Johns Hopkins University. She is based in the greater Boston area where she spends most of her free time chasing after her many (4!) children.

Deborah Murray is the Managing Partner, Director of GroupM Traffic, where she oversees a team dedicated to linear and premium video trafficking services for GroupM clients. With over 20 years of experience, Deborah specializes in onboarding clients and customizing workflows to adapt to the ever-evolving media landscape.

Deborah’s expertise spans all forms of linear media, including national and local video, audio, direct response, addressable, cinema, and VOD, as well as print and out-of-home. She played a key role in creating and implementing a new Premium Video workflow, driving cost and manpower efficiencies, and was instrumental in developing a universal specification for delivering creative assets to publishers.

Deborah has established vendor relationships that ensure first-rate clearance, distribution, and talent payment services. She has managed complex creative executions for high-profile campaigns, such as the Peacock launch, and has extensive experience working across various categories, including CPG, automotive, studio, and retail. She also developed print and out-of-home traffic processes for a major beverage client.

Deborah’s earlier experience at Y&R NY and MediaEdge provides her with a holistic understanding of client workflows, from creative briefs to successful campaign launches, as well as a strong ability to troubleshoot potential challenges.

An industry leader, Deborah co-chairs the 4As Traffic Committee, a role she has held since 2005, and was a founding member of the Broadcast Traffic Committee sponsored by the 4As. She has also served on the Ad-ID board and contributed to the establishment of HD commercial coding and closed-captioned commercial creative standards. A strong advocate for accessibility, Deborah has supported the adoption of Descriptive Video for the visually impaired and actively participates in Joint Policy Committee Town Halls addressing new talent contracts for SAG performers.

Frank has been at NBCUniversal for 15+ years and in his current role as VP, Ad Tech Platforms, Frank is responsible for supporting and re-imagining the “pitch to pay” systems and workflows across NBCU’s National, Local and Global Partnerships footprint on all Linear and Digital endpoints. Frank also focuses on customer automation initiatives with the goal of simplifying buy/sell side transactions.

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.

Katie Shell is an Associate Product Manager at the IAB Tech Lab. She supports industry software development and contributes to a range of digital advertising standards across the IAB Tech Lab specification portfolio, focusing on taxonomies and programmatic practices.

Hill is a dad joke aficionado, avid reader, podcast junky, and boasts a 995-day streak on Duolingo. She comes to Tech Lab from Epsilon where she was the product lead for their partnership with The Trade Desk and the Disclosed offering. She got her start with the IAB TechLab in the Distributed Ledger working group via her role at GroupM as the Assoc. Director of Product Management on the Global Investment Systems team. She has varied experience on both the buy and sell side of the industry and enjoys nerding out about all things ad tech.