Samba TV, the global leader in television technology and omniscreen advertising and analytics, today announced the expansion of its Australian operation following a year of significant growth in the world’s 10th largest advertising market.
The company announced its Australian business more than doubled in revenue YoY and appointed key hires to support business growth: Tom Parsons (middle-right in the image above) as head of client & data partnerships, Damien Tang (far left in the image) as data solutions director and Simeon Swain (middle left in the image) as commercial lead – programmatic & audience. The expansion in Australia is part of Samba TV’s global growth strategy and comes off the back of recent announcements of increased investment in Germany, France and the U.K.
The trio will join Samba TV to further drive the adoption of the company’s ACR first-party viewership data. This will enable advertisers, agencies, broadcasters, publishers and measurement firms looking to achieve incremental impact beyond their linear TV buys to effectively measure across all screens and deliver more seamless viewing experiences.
“We’re very pleased with the strong momentum and growth across our business globally,” said Samba TV CEO & co-founder Ashwin Navin. “With 92% of linear ad impressions in Australia repeatedly served to the same 55% of households, the opportunity for the industry to innovate and deliver better omniscreen TV planning, activation and measurement has never been greater.”
“Australia is a dynamic market where advertisers are focused on innovation to provide the best possible experience for consumers who are watching TV across more platforms with more flexibility than ever before,” said Yasmin Sanders, managing director of Australia at Samba TV.
“We’re on a mission to continue introducing innovative ways for advertisers to achieve deduplicated incremental reach and omniscreen addressability by leveraging our TV viewership data. I am thrilled to have Tom, Damien and Simeon join us during such a pivotal and exciting time for our business. Their combined experience in digital, data, advanced TV and measurement will be instrumental in taking our success to the next level.”
As head of client & data partnerships, Tom will oversee commercial partnerships with advertisers, agencies, broadcasters, platforms, publishers and measurement firms looking to integrate Samba TV’s proprietary data and access advanced omniscreen analytics to achieve better attribution and efficiency. Tom joins from Gracenote, where he was VP of Sales and oversaw APAC growth and business development for global broadcasters, streamers and Smart TV companies. He also held cross-functional leadership roles for commercial product integration across the Gracenote-Nielsen organisation.
In addition to his expertise in content discovery and personalisation, Tom will bring to Samba TV his rich commercial experience, stemming from his time at Perform Sports Media and deltatre. “Premium content and access is continuing to scale and Connected TV’s are cementing their position as the centrepiece of the Australian household,” said Tom. “Samba TV is uniquely placed to enable Australian media brands and companies to flourish and win through powerful data and analytics. I’m excited to spearhead that vision with this talented team.”
Damien, in his role as data solutions director, will lead data integrations, client solutions and oversee operations for Samba TV’s programmatic audience offering. He will work alongside Tom to incorporate Samba TV’s data and analytics into the technology stacks of partners. Damien joins from Carsales/Audience360, where he was the Audience & Data Commercialisation Lead. He also worked across data and measurement at some of Australia’s largest media organisations, including Foxtel, NewsCorp and Seven West Media. Damien said, “The opportunity for brands to use Samba TV’s data sets to create better ad experiences is huge – the company’s ACR powered first-party data is unique, rich and actionable. This is an exciting step for me because first-party data is my passion and I cannot wait to join Samba TV’s journey.”
Simeon joins as commercial lead – programmatic & audience to manage programmatic sales and drive new commercial opportunities, with a focus on enabling advertisers to achieve effective omniscreen programmatic audience targeting and incremental reach. He brings to Samba TV strong agency relationships, programmatic expertise and a proven track record of scaling commercial success from his time at Criteo and AdRoll/NextRoll. “Samba TV is on an impressive growth trajectory, which I believe is largely due to the company’s unique capabilities that are highly relevant for an industry that is hungry for future-proofed, privacy-first data insights.” said Simeon. “I’m absolutely thrilled to join this foundational team and to bring that value to the Australian market.”
