Precise TV, which touts itself as providing a kid-safe contextual video advertising platform, has hired Denis Crushell as chief commercial officer.
Crushell is responsible for leading the London-based company’s sales and partnerships at it expands beyond YouTube to to connected TV and other digital platforms. He hails from digital video measurement firm Tubular Labs, where he spent six years, most recently as chief revenue officer. Prior to that, Crushell was at YouTube, where he was head of sponsorships for EMEA, and previously held commercial leadership roles at Google.
“I’m astounded at what the Precise TV team has built, entirely bootstrapped,” said Crushell. “I’ve seen plenty of impressive engineering in the video technology industry, and Precise TV’s self-learning system is like no other.”
Precise TV was founded in 2015 by Christian Dankl, formerly an exec at ProSiebenSat.1, Disney’s Maker Studios and social media advertising firm AdParlor, and Nadav Shmuel, previously U.K. managing director at AdParlor.
“Denis is an industry leader and connected to some of the most influential companies and executives transforming the online video and convergent TV world,” said Dankl, Precise TV’s chairman. “Denis joins at a pivotal moment to help expand our platform to connected TV and eventually all video platforms.”
Precise TV says it’s the world’s first YouTube ad platform that is compliant with the Children’s online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other regulations, by using contextual analysis to serve brand-safe, relevant and privacy compliant video campaigns aimed at young audiences and families.
There’s a growing market need for a solution like Precise TV, Dankl said, because advertisers can’t use behavioral targeting to reach kids — Facebook and Google no longer allow age-based targeting of ads to anyone under 18. He cited Nielsen data estimating that nearly 30% of YouTube viewers in the U.S. are 2-18 years old.
Precise TV is headquartered in London with offices in New York, L.A., Sarasota, Fla., and Sydney, Australia. The privately held company has about 30 employees. Precise TV is profitable and has not taken any outside investment, according to Dankl. To date in 2021, the company’s revenue has more than doubled, he said. Clients include Jaguar, Adobe, Chanel and Hilton.
Precise TV’s competitors include GumGum, which earlier this year $75 million investment from Goldman Sachs, and Zefr.
