Article originally published in The Drum.

Demand-side platform (DSP) MediaMath has named Konrad Gerszke president.

Part of his remit to oversee day-to-day operations includes accelerating product development and initiatives around high-growth areas, including in connected television (CTV).

“It is a huge growth opportunity,” said Gerszke. “We have a very strong commitment in CTV and we’re bringing programmatic into that.” He added that MediaMath is working with a host of clients to strengthen its CTV product offerings.

MediaMath declined to share how much its CTV business has grown in recent years.

Gerszke spent the last eight years in various roles at Nielsen, most recently serving as group president of the measurement company’s CPG division. Prior to Nielsen, he spent 13 years at consulting firm McKinsey.

While he did not spend a majority of his career in adtech, Gerszke said his experience in omnichannel measurement on both the media- and CPG-side of Nielsen should translate to the DSP’s cross-platform strategy.

“That’s an important aspect,” said Gerszke. “Advertisers demand coverage of all eyeballs across all channels, and comparability of metrics across the dollars that they’re spending.”

Gerszke added that MediaMath will be working on integrating Nielsen’s digital ad ratings into its platform to make “life much easier” for the company’s publisher and agency partners.

Gerszke will be based in New York and report to MediaMath chief executive officer Joe Zawadzki.

“We’re really fortunate to gain a leader with Konrad’s scaled, practical and proven operational expertise as well as his ability to affect change at a global scale,” said Zawadzki. “As we accelerate the work we’ve begun towards the creation of an accountable and addressable supply chain, I am confident Konrad is the right leader to help us move MediaMath into its next phase of growth.”

MediaMath recently partnered with White Ops to fight ad fraud, which is encroaching into CTV and over-the-top (OTT) television, with one report finding that 18% of ad requests for OTT inventory are fraudulent. Gerszke said MediaMath will be applying a similar approach to fight ad fraud in CTV as it does across programmatic digital.

The DSP’s new president had spent much of his time at Nielsen and McKinsey working across Europe, home of GDPR. With the California Consumer Privacy Act coming into effect on 1 January of next year, Gerszke said advertisers much take a privacy-first approach.

“There’s only one way to make advertising successful. That is to take consumers in the equation,” said Gerszke.

“In the long run, advertising will only work for the consumer if we are taking into consideration what the consumer wants to do with their data.”