David Cooperstein, a darling of the digital marketing analyst ecosystem, has exited Forrester Research to join Simulmedia, a company that harnesses data on how some 50 million Americans watch TV everyday. He’ll be Simulmedia’s chief marketing officer, the company revealed Wednesday. Simulmedia has 85 employees.
Cooperstein spent close to five years at the analyst firm, where he most recently served as VP and leader of the CMO and Marketing Leadership practice. Formerly he was CMO of online ad network Burst Media, and had an array of positions at Northwest Airlines and Booz, Allen & Hamilton.
Cooperstein is only the latest in a series of interactive marketing analysts to exit Forrester in recent memory. Rob Brosnan joined marketing tech and services firm StrongView in January. Joanna O’Connell joined AdExchanger last fall as Director of Research. Joe Stanhope moved to tag management vendor BrightTag in March to serve as SVP of marketing, and Suresh Vittal joined Neolane as chief product officer prior to its notable acquisition by Adobe Systems last summer.
But, according to Cooperstein, it’s an amiable parting. “I really enjoyed my time at Forrester, have great connections across the marketer and agency side of the landscape, and I hope to stay in touch with all of those folks,” he said.
“I’ve been watching the progress of [Simulmedia’s] business and it was unlike digital and mobile, which I think a lot of people are in the middle of already,” he added. “It was something very different. … I think this is an opportunity to do something that I believe is a substantial change in the way advertising works. Networks [are] underrepresented [in terms of what] they can do from an advertising distribution standpoint.”
Simulmedia, as described by CEO Dave Morgan in a recent conversation, has licensed anonymous, set-top box viewing data from telcos, cable and satellite companies, as well as alternative set-top box sources such as TiVo, to “know, in a really accurate way, exactly the concentration of different audiences on 125,000 TV spots that air every single day,” to help advertisers reach super-targeted TV audiences.
The Simulmedia Audience Network is an audience data activation platform the company developed in conjunction with nine major multi-system operators and 73 of the top 90 cable networks, to deliver incremental ad dollars to TV partners. Collectively, this represents more than 75% of all television inventory, according to Morgan.
The very definition of “television” is, in and of itself, evolving. As viewership further fragments due to on-demand content, diversity of devices and a whole plethora of access points, advertisers will increasingly move toward addressable audiences to ensure data-optimized delivery of placements.
Additionally, during this season’s digital newfronts and network upfronts, it became clear that change is afoot on the network side, as well. Both ABC and NBCUniversal expressed plans to push for a more automated means of selling linear TV ad inventory.
“I think there’s a recognition that TV is not a standalone medium, anymore,” Cooperstein said. “I think in terms of how it’s going to manifest itself – it’s still going to leave the $75 billion-plus TV market growing with different ways of accessing video inventory behind it.”
