If anyone understands what it’s like to work inside one of the walled gardens, it’s David George, who left Facebook as Head of Mobile Publisher Solutions just over a year ago. Now as the CEO of Pixability, he’s helping to expand the company’s data and machine learning platform from social media giants like Facebook and Google into connected television.
“We’ve provided the opportunity for people to toe dip into connected TV. So we see that as really a big part of our future,” George says in this interview with Beet.TV at the LUMA Partners Digital Media East conference.
Referred to in some circles as “the trade desk for walled gardens,” Pixability’s foundation is in helping advertisers target audiences within YouTube and Facebook. “We are the only technology platform that has access to what is really the largest video inventory, and we get to leverage the unique capabilities for targeting and so forth on YouTube and Facebook,” George says.
In recent years Pixability has extended its footprint to Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Spotify. “Were uniquely positioned at the moment in really what’s a super exciting space.”
During most of his tenure at Facebook, George led the Mobile Publisher Solutions team, which drove rapid growth for Facebook’s Audience Network, according to a Pixability news release. His video software experience includes stints at Celtra, KickApps and Maven Networks, which was acquired by Yahoo.
“Think of us as a tech player that sits on top of the Google stack as well as Facebook.”
Asked about consumer data, George says, “We can leverage first-party data from clients, but it’s less of a challenge because we live within the walled gardens. All the data is available to us.”
As part of the YouTube Measurement Program, Pixability gets access to “a bunch of data that brands will use for insights about the audiences, and it obviously helps us with helping them find their audiences on these platforms.”
One of the company’s main focuses right now is around planning capabilities for targeting down to “micro audiences. That doesn’t exist in the market outside of Pixability.”
“They’ve been our trusted partner for many years and we’re one of their largest partners there,” he says of YouTube. “But now also having a cross-platform story that now will extend into connected TV.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of LUMA Partners’ DIGITAL MEDIA EAST 2019. For more videos from the conference, please visit this page. This series is sponsored by 4INFO.
