Head of CTV @ Seedtag

Daniel Church

Award-winning innovator shaping the future of
Connected Television and Contextual Advertising.

View My Work Get in Touch
10+ Years in TV
2 Patents
4 Industry Awards
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01

About

Daniel Church

I pair deep technical fluency with sharp commercial instinct across the television ecosystem.

Currently steering Seedtag's vision for Contextual TV as Head of CTV, I shape product direction and market positioning as the medium evolves. Over 10 years in advanced TV, with influential roles at Beachfront (acquired by Seedtag in 2024), FreeWheel, StickAds.tv, and Smaato. I've helped set many of the standards underpinning modern convergent television.

I'm a named inventor on two convergent TV patents, a frequent conference speaker, and a trusted industry sounding board. I believe the best work happens at the intersection of technology and business, building products that solve real problems for real people.

Connected TV Programmatic Advertising Contextual Targeting Ad Tech Standards Product Strategy Addressable TV
02

Experience

Seedtag Head of CTV
2024 – Present

Steering the company's vision for Contextual TV, shaping product direction and market positioning as the medium evolves. Leading initiatives in next-gen contextual targeting that work without IDs or IPs.

Contextual TV Vision Product Strategy Market Positioning
Beachfront Media Head of Advanced TV Product
2018 – 2024

Led Beachfront's groundbreaking effort to uniformly connect cable, broadcast, and connected TV within modern advertising marketplaces. Designed and launched a first-to-market product enabling real-time, programmatic monetization of cable VOD inventory with addressability.

Pioneered some of the first programmer-owned CTV supply to DSPs, navigating early challenges in authentication, creative quality, and viewability measurement.

Convergent TV Platform Programmatic VOD Addressable Linear Patent Inventor
FreeWheel Senior Account Manager, DSP Partnerships
2015 – 2018

Managed DSP partnerships and grew programmatic revenue. Rolled out the first CTV programmers programmatically with DSP partners, opening up an entirely new inventory category.

DSP Partnerships Programmatic Revenue First CTV Programmers
StickAds.tv DSP Account Manager (Acquired by FreeWheel)
2014 – 2015

Built and managed DSP partnerships for emerging TV advertising technologies, driving programmatic demand in the early connected TV era.

DSP Partnerships Early CTV Programmatic Demand
Smaato Senior Demand Account Manager
2011 – 2014

Began my career at the intersection of technology and advertising, managing demand-side partnerships and building the foundation for a decade-plus in the TV ecosystem.

Demand Partnerships Programmatic Ads Ad Tech Foundation
03

Patents

Named inventor on patented technologies advancing TV advertising infrastructure.

US #11,115,696
Programmatic Ingestion and STB Delivery in Ad Auction Environments
Granted: Sep 2021 Beachfront Media LLC

A system and method for ingesting and delivering advertising inventory through set-top boxes in real-time ad auction environments, enabling programmatic monetization of linear TV at scale.

Co-inventors: Richard Shea, Marshall Wong
US #11,599,914
Programmatic Ingestion and Zoned Cable Delivery of Linear TV in Ad Auction Environments
Granted: Mar 2023 Beachfront Media LLC

Disclosed is delivering and closing out viewership-priced spots in zoned cable delivery of linear TV, assembling past measured viewership data within a zone, running automated auctions at five minutes or less before airtime, and calculating extended pricing within six hours of airing.

Co-inventors: Richard Shea, Frank Sinton
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Awards & Recognition

🏆
40 Under 40 Honoree
NYC TV Week
2022
⭐
Cynopsis Rising Star
Cynopsis
2022
💡
Innovator of the Year
Cablefax
2022
🎯
Technology Executive of the Year
StreamTV Show
Finalist
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Speaking & Industry

A frequent conference speaker and trusted industry sounding board.

Conference Appearances

NAB Show
Connected TV & Contextual Advertising
POSSIBLE
Why Matching Ad Emotion to TV Content Triples Viewer Attention
TVOT SF
Contextual Advertising: Lessons from the Field
NYC TV Week
40 Under 40, Advanced TV Innovation
Digiday
Neuro-Contextual TV
AdTechGod Podcast
Episode 15, Advanced TV Product Deep Dive

Industry Leadership

IAB Advanced TV Working Group
Member since 2017, Defining OTT advertising standards and Identifier for Advertising (IFA)

Featured In

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Beyond Work

The things that keep me going when I'm off the clock.

🏍️

Motorcycle Riding

There's nothing like the open road. Full attention, present in the moment, just you and the machine.

⛵

Sailing

Reading the wind, adjusting the trim, working with nature rather than against it. A different kind of engineering.

🔬

Self-Hosted AI Infrastructure

Not content waiting for the cloud. I built my own.

R740xd, AI Compute Node ● Online
GPUs 3× NVIDIA Tesla V100 (32GB)
Compute Dual Xeon Gold, 2.5 TFLOPS FP16
Services LiteLLM · Ollama · Qdrant · Langfuse
Infrastructure LXC Containers · Prometheus/Grafana

Self-hosting your AI stack gives you control over latency, privacy, and cost, and the satisfaction of building the infrastructure yourself.

⚽

CT United FC

Proud supporter of Connecticut's MLS NEXT Pro team. Bringing professional soccer to the region, one matchday at a time.

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Let's Connect

Whether it's about CTV, contextual advertising, AI infrastructure, or just connecting, I'd love to hear from you.

danielchurch37@gmail.com LinkedIn Seedtag Blog