Contextual ad firm Precise TV said it named former Google exec Andy Tress as senior VP of sales.
Tress, most recently head of sales at Google Shopping, will be responsible for Precise TV’s go to market strategy, particularly in the U.S., as it branches out beyond its original specialty in children’s video.
Precise TV also said it made a deal that lets it incorporate exclusive Amazon shopping behavior data into its platform. The additional data helped improve conversion rates by 43% in early efforts.
“It’s ideal timing to bring Andy aboard given Precise TV’s product market fit has reached an inflection point due to privacy regulation changes and the influx of advertisers demanding better return on their video advertising investments,” said Christian Dankl, Precise TV co-founder and chairman. “2023 will finally bring the death of the cookie, and it’s exciting to imagine what more our contextual intelligence platform can do when it’s already eliminating up to 60 percent of non-relevant video ad impressions pre-bid for our brand customers.”
Tress was at Google for nearly 10 years. He was one of the first sales people for YouTube before it was acquired by Google. Earlier, he held posts at Yahoo and media agency Carat, as well as startups including Harvest Solutions and Transactional Media.
Tress told Broadcasting+Cable he was eager to return to a startup and “be around smart people and great tech.” Precise TV also has the right product at the right time.
“What drew me to Precise TV is the company’s ability to set new return on ad spend standards for video advertisers,” said Tress. “Channel-level targeting, behavioral targeting and other video performance marketing approaches simply aren’t enough to thrive in today’s fragmented attention economy. Precise TV’s ability to carve out the specific video-level gems from disparate premium video channels and layer in a swath of intent data is the recipe for business outcomes-based success.”
Also: Denis Crushell Joins Precise TV as Chief Commercial Officer
Precise TV in January made a deal with Iris.TV to bring contextual targeting to connected TV.
Having data from Amazon “gives us insight into users’ shopping behavior and affinity towards certain brands, product categories,” he said. “As we build out our contextual targeting approach we can align that from a performance standpoint. As we start to look further down the funnel from awareness down in to the mid and lower funnel, that shopping data is really valuable.”
Tress said he’s working on a go-to-market strategy, looking at how Precise will approach both clients and agencies.
“I’m a big believer that video can be used as a performance mechanism,” he said. “It’s exciting to be able to bring this deep contextual layer that Precise has to the table as a full-funnel marketing solution.” ■
