LOS ANGELES—James Shears has joined ThinkAnalytics as senior vice president, advertising, tasked with leading global strategy and commercial expansion of the company’s AI-powered
A 20-year veteran of TV, streaming and data-driven advertising, Shears most recently was vice president of business development and client partnerships at XR Extreme Reach. Previous senior posts included senior vice president, client solutions at Nielsen; general manager, advanced TV at The Trade Desk; and head of programmatic at Dish Network. Earlier in his career, he also worked at Scripps and TV Guide Network.
“ James brings exactly the right mix of advertising expertise, data strategy, and commercial leadership to drive our next chapter,” ThinkAnalytics chairman and co-founder Eddie Young said. “As the industry moves toward first-party data and outcome-driven advertising, his leadership will help customers turn their own data into a strategic asset.”
Shears will focus on driving adoption of ThinkAnalytics’ privacy-safe audience intelligence and metadata enrichment solutions, the company said, which are meant to help owners increase yield, grow premium inventory, and deliver more relevant, effective advertising.
ThinkAnalytics’ ThinkMediaAI platform unifies audience content and metadata intelligence to help media firms unlock the full value of their first-party data. Benefits include personalized discovery, enriched metadata, and high-performing advertising across linear, CTV, and streaming environments, the company said.
“Media owners are sitting on incredibly valuable first-party data and there’s a real opportunity to get more value from the viewership and content signals they see every day,” Shears said. “ThinkAnalytics is uniquely positioned to use AI to transform data into high-value audience segments, content intelligence, and enriched metadata creating deeper engagement between viewers, content and advertisers while strengthening connections across the ecosystem.”
The ThinkMediaAI platform generates more than 8 billion daily recommendations and supports more than 500 million viewers across 47 languages and multiple countries, the company said.
