London, England, United Kingdom
Global media and technology leader with a track record across major players including Sky, The Trade Desk, Microsoft, Channel 4, Verizon, Nokia, and The Guardian, as well as strategic projects with Google, YouTube, Samsung, and the BBC. Award-winning digital innovator with senior leadership experience across client, agency, and media owner roles. Proven success in scaling platforms, building global digital and subscription services, and leading high-performing commercial/ sales, technology/product/engineering and creative teams. Specialist in transmedia, branded content, advertising, adtech, product and strategic marketing, sales and technology partnerships. Deep sector expertise spanning entertainment (music, film, gaming), retail/CPG, tech, telecoms, finance, sport, and public sector. Strong focus on the intersection of premium content, streaming, advertising, and technology—especially Connected TV, BVOD/SVOD/AVOD/FAST, identity, retail media, VR/AR, voice, and new horizons across generative AI. Advisor to global tech firms, media owners, and agencies, deep board and trustee experience. Passionate about empathetic leadership, innovation, music, wellbeing, and meaningful collaboration.
Thrilled to be leading a key area at Sky, Europe’s leading and largest direct to consumer media and entertainment business reaching over 120 million people across 7 markets. Sky is Europe’s top media company, and part of the world’s largest entertainment media organisation, Comcast NBCUniversal with some of the best known entertainment brands in the world, with manifold broadcast and streaming markets across thousands of global mutiplatform channels. Sky’s Content Technology and Innovation team delivers high-quality content to homes, customer devices, businesses and commercial partners across our European markets, combining strategic insights, engineering know-how and operational excellence to use the most innovative technologies to create and distribute our award-winning content. - Leading the Ad tech and Engineering business within content, technology and innovation across Europe. - Developing and running the platforms delivering linear and targeted advertisement (AdSmart) and OTT (Now and Sky Go), across Sky in Europe including UK, Italy and Germany. - Strategic management and leadership of major department across external and internal partners for Sky within advertising technology, content and innovation. Bringing expert domain/industry experience, with knowledge of advertising and content technologies in the media space, in TV operators & broadcasters, leading and developing a successful team of 140+, leveraging experience of Products and Platforms delivered and operated in the Cloud; perpetuating and evolving the strong Agile culture and influencing the future of global media, including understanding and ideating Big Data and AI/ML, the fusion of content, ads, monetisation, tech and Gen AI concepts. Operating to evolve the international entertainment landscape at the nexus of the very biggest premium content, revenue and tech.
Leading the partnerships & inventory business in EMEA for The Trade Desk across the largest global and EMEA omni-channel players, media owners, media companies and multi-channel publishers and broadcasters - digital, mobile, in-app, native, social and Connected TV (including all forms of streaming video, Advanced TV, Addressable TV, Programmatic TV and premium video), with Trade Desk partners ranging from Google, Spotify, Global Radio, BBC, Channel 4, Sky, RTL, TF1 to Tencent, Alibaba, Discovery, Disney, Hulu and many more as we shepherd in the next phase of ad-funded connected media and culture across the open internet in this new golden era of BVOD/SVOD/AVOD and global premium original entertainment. With a market capitalisation of circa $40 billion, Global advertising technology leader The Trade Desk™ Inc. (Nasdaq: TTD), is a technology company that empowers buyers of advertising. Through its self-service, cloud-based platform, ad buyers can create, manage, and optimize more expressive data-driven digital advertising campaigns across ad formats, including display, video, audio, native and, social, on a multitude of devices, such as computers, mobile devices, and connected TV. Integrations with major data, inventory, and publisher partners ensure maximum reach and decisioning capabilities, and enterprise APIs enable custom development on top of the platform. Pivotal leadership role at the nexus of the next wave of digital advertising, media and the free and open internet. Headquartered in Ventura, CA, The Trade Desk has 25 offices around the world including North America, Europe, and Asia. Profile piece from E-Consultancy: https://econsultancy.com/day-in-the-life-dave-castell-gm-inventory-partnerships-emea-the-trade-desk/
Microsoft Accelerator is a global initiative to help entrepreneurs build great companies. Working with startups at every stage of maturity to provide the tools, resources, and expertise they need to succeed. Our approach helps startups scale their business, bring innovative services to market, and reach new customers. At Microsoft, the mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.
Broad-remit role developing commercial marketing and brand partnerships between Microsoft and key retail clients, bringing together advertising, content, innovation and media in new and unexpected ways, driving pioneering innovation and strategic alliances. Using some of the biggest platforms on Microsoft: Windows, Windows Phone, Skype, Outlook.com, Bing, MSN and Xbox. Executing CXO level partnerships in combination with the client’s creative and media agencies across client director and communication planning departments, across key retail and broad partnerships connecting in strategically with other verticals including entertainment, FMCG and technology. Driving creative, technical and commercial business development and strategic partnerships connecting Microsoft and the biggest global marketing partners, working with the coolest tech and innovation and looking at creating ground breaking partnerships that create 'greater than the sum of the parts' results. Forecasting, prospecting and closing multimillion pound vertical sales quota. Clients included eBay, John Lewis, Starbucks, McDonalds, Tesco, Very and more,
- Heading up the Global Marketing & Brand Partnerships function and teams for Entertainment at Microsoft. - Key senior leadership role feeding into the extended leadership team, building, evolving the Entertainment business commercially across the globe. Including: leading marketing and brand partnerships globally, driving consumer engagement and activation, industry and transmedia content marketing partnerships (including digital, social, mobile, TV), local artist and content partnerships, operator brand collaboration/partnerships, Go To Market partnerships planning and execution for Entertainment to create awesome cross-platform entertainment initiatives (Europe, the Americas, IMEA and APAC). Managing immediate teams in Europe and matrix teams globally. - Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Formerly Nokia, The Microsoft Services Business is a global leader in mobile communications whose products have become an integral part of the lives of people around the world. Every day, more than 1.3 billion people use our devices to capture and share experiences, access information, find their way or simply to speak to one another. Microsoft Devices Group, is the expanded devices business that includes Lumia smartphones and tablets, Nokia mobile phones, Xbox hardware, Surface, Perceptive Pixel (PPI) products, and accessories, a broad portfolio of innovative smart devices, mobile phones and services. Windows Phone is the fastest-growing ecosystem in the smartphone market, and its portfolio of award-winning devices continues to expand. Windows Phone reinforced its position as a top three smartphone operating system and was the fastest-growing platform among the leading operating systems with 91 percent year-over-year gain.
With a market cap of over $4bn, Nuance Communications, Inc. is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI (Artificial Intellligence) innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that can understand, analyse and respond to human language to increase productivity and amplify human intelligence. With decades of domain and artificial intelligence expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organisations and brands – in global industries that include healthcare, telecommunications, automotive, financial services, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce. Nuance were credited with being the company behind Apple's Siri product. Role spanning global product marketing and advertising, consulting across global mobile providers (CSPs, Telcos), services and Emmy-Award winning TV / Smarthome offering, partnered with the likes of NBC Comcast.
Mobile revenue company, specialising in programmatic networks, collaboratively increasing revenues for publishers with smart thinking and technology, based in London and LA. Particular focus on MoPub optimisation and mediation solutions in multiple Geos.