The Fierce Video editorial team is proud to present its second annual Emerging Leaders Awards, recognizing the brightest young professionals rising up the ranks of the streaming TV industry. Throughout the months of May and June we’ll be featuring these profiles with each of our finalists. We will announce the winners during our StreamTV Show with an awards ceremony June 17 at 3:15 p.m. ET. Not yet registered for the StreamTV Show, running June 15-17? Be sure to register now and save your spot at this free virtual event!
Daniel Church/Beachfront:
Daniel Church is a strategic product leader with more than a decade of experience driving advertising innovation across the TV industry. One part builder and one part strategist, Church currently serves as the head of advanced TV product at Beachfront Media, where he leads the company’s endeavor to connect traditional cable and broadcast television to modern advertising marketplaces. Church has authored several patent-pending technologies around advanced TV. Prior to his role at Beachfront, he served in similar roles at FreeWheel, StickAds.tv (Acquired by FreeWheel) and Smaato.
What his colleagues are saying:
“Daniel is a passionate problem-solver and industry pioneer and a big driver of the innovation happening at Beachfront and the TV ecosystem at large. Technically curious with a strong moral compass, Daniel strives for excellence in everything he does, both professionally and personally. His unwavering dedication, curiosity and compassion are instrumental in bringing the collective convergent TV ecosystem forward” - Chris Maccaro, CEO at Beachfront
Streaming Industry Q&A:
What streaming services do you subscribe to?
Hulu, Netflix, Showtime and Starz.
Describe your biggest career highlight so far.
I designed and launched a first-to-market product that not only enabled real-time, programmatic monetization of cable video-on-demand (VOD) inventory, but also made it addressable. Launching an industry-first product to the market is extremely challenging and takes a lot of effort, but it is highly rewarding, especially when it solves a major problem that our clients are facing. The fact that we enabled addressability from the start eased a lot of the challenges with monetization, as our ad buying partners were able to apply their typical targeting criteria and buying behavior to the inventory from the outset.
What has been your biggest career learning experience?
My biggest learning experience was launching some of the first programmer-owned connected TV supply to DSPs in the early days of programmatic monetization of CTV. There were a lot of challenges we uncovered right off the bat as one of the first movers. The authentication companies scanning inventory at the DSPs blocked it pre-bid due to it being inserted server-side, creative quality requirements were often not honored and many buy-side clients stated that they could not purchase it as viewability measurement was not possible. Fixing these issues required learning about each in detail to overcome technical challenges and business objections, and it is still the biggest single project learning experience of my career. I'm incredibly grateful for the experience, as it has influenced all of my work with TV products since and the learnings from the initial journey have been invaluable.
What's next for you in terms of new challenges in streaming TV?
Addressable linear allows the best of traditional TV and the best of streaming to combine. Unifying multiple different addressable standards will be key to unlocking the full potential for brands and advertisers. We take a technology-first approach to these challenges at Beachfront, so rather than pushing for a unified industry solution, I will be working closely with my colleagues to support all major standards within one platform to unlock seamless executions for the buy-side.