Dan Best Joins Creative Effectiveness Platform DAIVID As Strategic Advisor

Creative effectiveness platform DAIVID today (October 24th, 2023) announced it has hired digital media leader Dan Best as strategic advisor, to clients. 

Best, who has held senior roles at companies including Teads, Unruly (now Nexxen), and The Telegraph, will be responsible for expanding DAIVID’s relationships with brands and agencies.

DAIVID is a creative effectiveness platform that helps advertisers create better-performing ad campaigns. The UK-based company uses advanced technologies -- including facial coding, machine learning and computer vision -- to help brands optimise the impact of their creative and media strategies, affordably and at scale.

Solutions include an AI-powered ad algorithm called REACT – currently in beta – that can predict the emotions people will feel while watching an ad without the need to show the content to audience testing panels. Partners include EssenceMediacom, Omnicom, Nestle, Meta, Coca-Cola, and ADK.

Best brings to his new role more than two decades of experience in commercial leadership and driving growth for various companies, including as a member of global media platform Teads’ senior UK team, where he was responsible for expanding the company’s relationships with FMCG clients.

Before that, Best was also part of the Unruly executive team responsible for the sale to News Corp in 2015 – at the time the most successful exit of any UK ad tech business. 

He was also head of advertising EMEA for WildBrain Spark, the largest independent global kids and family media company. Dan’s role means the continued growth of DAIVID’s senior team. He will be based in London and will report directly to CEO Ian Forrester.

Forrester, DAIVID CEO and founder, said: “This is an exciting new chapter for DAIVID and I’m absolutely thrilled that someone of Dan’s incredible experience and industry clout is joining us. At the moment, Adland is only seeing a glimpse of the potential impact AI can have on the industry – and with Dan’s help, I can’t wait to show how our AI-powered technology can help our clients supercharge their creative effectiveness at scale.”  

Best said: “I’m delighted to join DAIVID and can’t wait to start working with the team. Creative effectiveness is an essential part of the marketing mix and is generating significant interest with brands and their agency partners because of the meaningful gains in performance it unlocks.” 

Best joins at an exciting time for the London-based creative effectiveness platform. In the last six months, the company has added six new team members and formed exciting new client relationships across Europe, the US, and APAC.