Samba TV has announced the expansion of its Australian operation following a year of significant growth. The company announced its Australian business more than doubled in revenue YoY and appointed key hires to support business growth: Tom Parsons as head of client & data partnerships, Damien Tang as data solutions director, and Simeon Swain as commercial lead – programmatic & audience.
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 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.”
Yasmin Sanders, managing director of Australia at Samba TV, said “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.”
“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, Parsons 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. Parsons 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, Parsons 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 Parsons. “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.”
Tang, 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 Parsons to incorporate Samba TV’s data and analytics into the technology stacks of partners. Tang 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, News Corp and Seven West Media.
Tang 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.”
Swain 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 Swain. “I’m absolutely thrilled to join this foundational team and to bring that value to the Australian market.”
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Top image: Damien Tang, Simeon Swain, Tom Parsons and Yasmin Sanders