New Position to Catalyze Fast Growing CTV Business

TripleLift, one of the fastest-growing ad tech companies in the world,  announced the hiring of Keith Kazerman as SVP, Revenue for the company’s expanding Connected Television (CTV) business. Kazerman is responsible for growing both sides of the company’s CTV marketplace: on-boarding new premium supply partners and working with brands to address their buy-side needs.

Earlier this year, TripleLift took a majority investment from Vista Equity Partners, in part to catalyze growth in CTV.  The company built a two-pronged CTV strategy for content owners and brands, which includes offerings that appear both “In-Break” and “In-Show.”  In-Break ads are what the industry calls CTV Spots, mainly :05, :15 and :30 commercials that run within commercial breaks. In-Show is a TripleLifta innovation that inserts brand assets directly into television programs programmatically, a process that occurs during post-production. Machine learning technology determines where to insert an asset, with the result being a seamless experience for the viewer, greater monetization for the content owner, and a break-through placement for the advertiser. In-Show is poised to shake up the $23 billion product placement industry. Taken together, these two categories of ads represent the broadest CTV offering in programmatic advertising.

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Kazerman is a veteran of television sales in all of its formats. Most recently, he was EVP of Digital Sales and Advanced Advertising at Discovery, where he led the strategy and execution of the network’s ad sales business across linear TV, VOD and CTV. His remit included the successful launch of the consumer-facing Discovery Plus and development of the advertiser-tool Discovery Engage, which enables targeting, optimization and measurement across all screens. He previously held senior roles at DirecTV and the Hallmark Channel, and began his career planning media at advertising agencies.

“The work that TripleLift is doing in connected television will be game changing for the category,” said Kazerman. “We can’t simply copy and paste our way from linear television to CTV.  New solutions are needed and by building a marketplace that benefits all the players, TripleLift will get farther, faster. I was drawn to the opportunity of bringing those offerings to market and help usher in the next era of TV advertising.”

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CTV ad spend on the TripleLift platform has grown more than 500% since last year, a figure that includes both In-Break and In-Show formats.  The company’s In-Show alpha testing has joined together all sides of a truly multi-sided marketplace, including 6 brands and 12 producers, creators and CTV providers. Participating companies include Nissan, Tastemade, Fremantle, WhistleTV, Kidoodle and iTV America (creator of Hell’s Kitchen and other popular shows). Early results measured by MediaScience show that audiences spend 3x more time with brands and have up to 50% better recall for brand messages.

“This is the right time to bring on a talent with Keith’s experience,” said Michael Shields, GM of Connected Television, TripleLift.  “While we have been incubating our In-Show technology with our technology and content partners, we have grown our In-Break CTV Spots business by over 500% year-over-year. We’re now ready to bring the full offering to our client base of premier advertisers, and Keith will play a major role in making that happen.”

Kazerman is reporting directly to Shields in this new role.