Samba TV Hires Kris Magel As VP-Head Of Agency Development

Samba TV, a global provider of omniscreen advertising and analytics, has named Kris Magel vice president and head of agency development. Magel will manage Samba TV’s relationships with advertising agencies and holding companies, overseeing innovation and developing solutions for advanced media planning, activation and measurement. At the core of these solutions is the deployment of Samba TV Identity and Samba’s first-party TV data to help media buyers and sellers transact more efficiently and effectively.

With nearly three decades in the media and advertising industry, Magel has experience in the application of analytics, data and innovation to media, which, the company says, “will help agencies capture the value of first-party data that will help advertisers better understand their campaign performance.”

He arrives at Samba TV from international advertising, media and experience agency Dentsu, where he was president of media clients, responsible for building bespoke crossmedia solutions for existing and prospective brand clients. 

“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,” said Samba TV Co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin. “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.”

Prior to joining Dentsu, Magel was East Coast president of IPG media agency Initiative, where he also held the role of chief investment officer. Before IPG, Kris held various media buying leadership roles at Publicis media agencies Zenith, Optimedia and DeWitt Media.