Tenured Executive Will Spearhead the Adoption of First-Party Data as the Next-Generation Currency for Media Planning and Measurement

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, JULY 28, 2021 - Samba TV, a leading global provider of omniscreen advertising and analytics, today announced that Kris Magel has joined the company as Vice President and Head of Agency Development. Magel will manage Samba TV’s relationships with advertising agencies and holding companies, driving innovation and developing solutions for advanced media planning, activation and measurement. At the core of these solutions is the deployment of Samba TV Identity and Samba’s first-party TV data to enable media buyers and sellers to transact more efficiently and effectively to drive better outcomes for brands.

With nearly three decades in the media and advertising industry, Magel has a deep understanding of the application of analytics, data, and innovation to media, which will help agencies capture the value of first-party data that will help advertisers better understand their campaign performance. He arrives at Samba TV from international advertising, media, and experience agency, dentsu, where he was President of Media Clients responsible for building bespoke cross-media solutions for existing and prospective brand clients. 

"There are existential threats to media agencies due to the growing dominance of walled gardens that increasingly shield marketers from the transparency needed to develop cross-platform media plans and optimize them for business outcomes,” said Samba TV Co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin. "We’ve built an agnostic and global TV dataset with comprehensive identity solutions for agencies to harness the power of matching our first-party data with client-data to help advertisers understand the impact of their campaigns in real time and introduce entirely new currencies into the marketplace. Who better than Kris to form deep partnerships across the ecosystem that will usher in the right kind of innovation that drives transparency, and prevents data monopolies and ad technology platforms from eroding the value proposition that media agencies provide the industry at-large.”

Prior to joining dentsu, Magel was East Coast President of IPG media agency Initiative, where he also held the role of Chief Investment Officer. Before IPG, Kris held various media buying leadership roles at Publicis media agencies Zenith, Optimedia, and DeWitt Media.

“Samba TV has separated itself from the pack when it comes to packaging first-party TV data with a neutral, inventory-agnostic business model,” said Magel. “In this dramatically shifting landscape, now more than ever, there is a need for independent, first-party data and measurement providers that help advertisers see across platforms, including the walled gardens, who will typically lock advertisers into a single source of data attached to their owned ad inventory. Samba TV’s globally available, first-party TV data is built to deliver that to agencies and brands for cross-platform planning, activation and measurement. The Connected TV channel when integrated with Samba TV data will offer exponentially increasing value to brands as it grows in scale, addressability and measurability.”

About Samba TV

Samba TV enables the next generation TV experience powered by its first-party data, helping viewers engage with relevant media and empowering brand marketers to quantify that engagement. Samba TV's insights are built on a comprehensive source of real-time viewership data across broadcast, cable, over-the-top, and digital media. Invented in 2011, Samba TV’s technology is integrated at the chipset level across 24 Smart TV brands globally (the most in the industry) analyzing the content on screen in real-time. Samba TV delivers unbiased, comprehensive viewership data addressable through more than a billion devices around the world. The world’s leading brands leverage Samba TV to quantify media investments and amplify them across all the screens we use to watch video. For more information, please visit www.samba.tv.