Press Releases

tvScientific Announces First Head of Data Science

Written by tvScientific | Dec 22, 2022 8:24:24 PM
PASADENA, Calif., December 22, 2023 — tvScientific, the leading connected TV performance advertising platform, today announced the strategic appointment of industry veteran Michael Bilow, as its first head of data science, as well as the official launch of its Data Science Advisory Board. Together Bilow and the board will provide strategic guidance over tvScientific's industry leading approach to television attribution. Leveraging the expertise of the board and cutting-edge and effective AI/machine learning algorithms, tvScientific will now enable mass advertiser adoption of TV as a performance channel.

Michael Bilow joins tvScientific as a seasoned data scientist with more than a decade of experience in leading teams to apply machine learning and data engineering to solve real world problems. He’s worked with top tech brands like Protabit, where he accelerated COVID-19 antibodies research, and Foursquare, where he led the development of advertising and measurement technologies. Most recently, he was the principal engineer and team lead at Motional, where he led his team in the development of semantic search techniques for unstructured driverless technology data.

tvScientific’s first-of-its-kind data science board comprises industry powerhouses with deep experience in the development and application of data science to large-scale problems at leading companies such as Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle and Yahoo/Overture. Current members include:

  • Dr. Gary Flake, entrepreneur, author, and scientist. Former CTO search & data science at Salesforce, technical fellow and founder of Microsoft Live Labs, VP and founder of Yahoo! Research Labs, and chief science officer of Overture
  • Dr. Andrew Cron, senior vice president/chief scientist at 84.51 and board member at Last Mile Food Rescue, Inc. Former principal data scientist at Citadel
  • Dr. David Pennock, director of DIMACS center and professor of computer science at Rutgers University. Former assistant managing director of Microsoft Research New York and former principal research scientist at Yahoo!
  • Dr. Patrice Simard, chief executive officer at Intelus. Former distinguished engineer at Microsoft Research and chief scientist of Microsoft Ad Center
  • Dr. Scott Rickard, chief data scientist at Citadel LLC. Former CEO of hedge fund Probability Dynamics, professor of electrical engineering at University College Dublin, and the founding director of its Complex & Adaptive Systems Laboratory (CASL).


“Enabling search performance advertisers to engage in and succeed with television is a very interesting data science challenge that is particularly well suited for the application and innovation of advanced machine learning approaches,” said Michael Bilow, head of data science at tvScientific. “It's an interesting problem set and us data scientists love interesting problems. I’m excited to be a part of this company.”

Historically, millions of digital-first advertisers have been unable to enter the television advertising industry because of its high-friction sales processes and inaccurate measurement. The rise of the connected television (CTV) advertising paradigm provides unprecedented opportunities to solve these classic quandaries with its ability to deterministically connect the dots between television ads viewed and business outcomes.

“Television advertising is in the middle of a radical transformation, driven by mass consumer adoption of streaming services, in addition to the advent of platforms like tvScientific that enable advertisers to engage in CTV advertising,” said Jason Fairchild, CEO and co-founder of tvScientific. “Our goal is to power millions of businesses to execute performance advertising on television and our advisory board was specifically curated with some of the brightest data scientists and technologists who have spearheaded digital transformation, such as the paid search model, for some of the world’s most innovative companies.”

The board will support tvScientific in advancing the state-of-the-art in online advertising. "For most of its history, television advertising has been more art than science. Search and social advertising was a breakthrough because it aligned the economic incentives of all parties,” said Dr. Flake, chair of the advisory board. “But now, perhaps for the first time, we can connect the dots between these disparate systems, revealing holistic patterns that would otherwise be invisible." Through the advisory board’s strategic guidance, tvScientific will advance its goals to become the standard for television attribution and optimization through continued improvement of a fully deployed “set it and forget it” optimization technology.

About tvScientific

tvScientific is the most sophisticated performance advertising platform built for connected TV. The tvScientific platform makes TV advertising accessible and measurable for brands and apps of all sizes. tvScientific offers a self-managed solution custom built for performance marketers, that simplifies and automates TV buying and optimization, leveraging massive data to prove the actual value of TV advertising. The platform reaches 95% of AVOD inventory using proprietary, deterministic ID technology to measure ad exposure to outcome in an approachable, radically transparent and scalable way. An Idealab company, tvScientific was co-founded by senior executives with deep roots in programmatic advertising, digital media, and ad verification. Today, the company continues to make strategic alignments with key players — the most recent being NBCUniversal — to advance CTV performance advertising forward. The company is headquartered in Pasadena, California. For more information, visit https://www.tvscientific.com.