NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Simulmedia, a targeted television advertising company, today announced that Dr. Phil Neches, Alec Gerster, The Honorable Bob Kerrey, and Mike Donahue have joined the company's Board of Advisors. The Broad provides counsel to Simulmedia's top management as the company seeks to reinvent the way $70 billion in annual television advertising is bought and sold through audience targeting. Other advisors include Nancy Peretsman of Allen & Company, John K. Billock, former COO of Time Warner Cable, and George Schweitzer, president of marketing at CBS.
"The Board of Advisors lends invaluable advice and credibility as Simulmedia continues to build industry-advancing technologies," says company CEO Dave Morgan. "They bring extensive backgrounds and impressive accomplishments across disciplines key to our success including technology, academia, government, media, and marketing."
Dr. Philip M. Neches, the founder of Teradata and inventor of data mining, has more than 30 years of leadership experience in technology. He is Chairman of Foundation Ventures LLC, an investment bank serving information technology and life science companies. Previously, he was Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of AT&T's Multimedia Products and Services Group and Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist at NCR. Mr. Neches was also a founder of Teradata Corporation, which was acquired by NCR and AT&T in 1992. He is a Director of Evolving Systems, Inc. (EVOL), and a Trustee of the California Institute of Technology, where he earned his BS, MS and PhD in computer science.
Alec Gerster, longtime agency leader and visionary, served as Senior Marketing Director at Microsoft after the company purchased his firm, Navic Networks, in 2008. Before Navic, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Initiative Worldwide unit at Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. Mr. Gerster served a 30-year career as Executive Officer of publicly held Grey Global Group where he was heavily involved with the group's pioneering digital activities. Mr. Gerster has been Chairman of MediaCom since 1991. He served as Vice Chairman of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Inc. He serves as Director of Media Ventures for MediaCom's corporate parent, Grey Global Group. Mr. Gerster serves on the board of ABCi and HiWire, Inc. (Hiwire.com) and is Member of the International Television & Radio Society.
The Honorable Bob Kerrey, a former Senator from Nebraska, is executive chairman of the Minerva Institute for Research and Scholarship, supporting The Minerva Project, which provides an exceptional liberal arts and sciences education with a redefined student body, reinvented curriculum, rigorous academic standards, cutting-edge technology, and an immersive global experience. Before that, he served as President of The New School in NYC.
In the United States Senate, Mr. Kerry served on the Senate's Agriculture and Forestry Committee, Senate's Appropriations Committee, Senate's Finance Committee, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Prior to serving in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Kerrey served a four-year term as Nebraska's Governor.
Mike Donahue is EVP, Strategic Partnerships for the 4A's, the leading trade association representing the advertising agency business. Before that Mr. Donahue was with Saatchi & Saatchi and its predecessor agency, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of both agencies.
Mr. Donahue serves as staff officer on several 4A's special projects and committees, including the Value of Advertising, Creative, Large Agency Management, Interactive Agency Management committees. He is also responsible for overseeing conferences and special events, media services and many industry outreach initiatives. In this capacity, he has been closely involved in the development of Ad-ID™, the identification code for all media forms.
Simulmedia, Inc. (www.simulmedia.com) is a New York City-based television ad targeting company and operates the Simulmedia Audience Network, the world's first data-driven audience network for television. The company's targeting platform leverages predictive technologies and anonymous viewing data from more than 50 million US TV viewers to help national advertisers and their agencies better reach target audiences, and better measure the results. Simulmedia aggregates TV audiences through partnerships with TV system operators and national networks and reaches all 115 million US TV households. Over the past year, the company has helped more than 30 advertisers and their agencies target, deliver and measure hundreds of campaigns and see results that were 25-300% better than they were able to achieve with traditional TV ad scheduling and targeting methods.