Cross-screen advertising and analytics firm Samba TV has appointed Kris Magel as Vice President and Head of Agency Development, managing the firm's relationships with ad agencies and holding companies.

Samba TV combines data from social media, connected devices and tens of millions of opt-in smart TV households worldwide - along with panels representative of the US population - to measure television viewing and understand its impact on consumer behavior.

Magel (pictured) brings nearly three decades of experience in the media and advertising industry, and a deep understanding of the application of analytics, data, and innovation to media. He joins from marcoms group dentsu, where he was President of Media Clients, responsible for building bespoke cross-media solutions for existing and prospective brand clients. Before this he was East Coast President of IPG media agency Initiative, where he also held the role of Chief Investment Officer; and earlier he held a number of media buying leadership roles at Publicis media agencies Zenith, Optimedia and DeWitt Media.

Samba TV co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin comments: '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. 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'.

The firm is online at www.samba.tv .

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