Genius Digital rebrands as Dativa, appoints new CEO

Tom Weiss and Michael Collette

Genius Digital has rebranded as Dativa and appointed US-based media Michael Collette as CEO, positioning the company for further growth in North America.

Dativa said the rebrand marks the completion of the company’s transformation into a services business – focused on data strategy, engineering and operations services for brands, media and technology companies.

Collette takes over from Genius Digital CEO Tom Weiss, who now becomes Dativa’s chief technology officer and chief data scientist. He brings more than 20 years media and technology company experience to the role.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Collette was previously a founding executive of smart TV automatic content recognition, Cognitive Networks, and recently started as an entrepreneur in residence at boutique investment bank, Progress Partners.

“The emergence of diverse, strong sources of census TV data has started to transform the traditional television industry,” said Collette. “In 2017, we see ‘data driven TV’ in the early stages broad, irreversible adoption.”

He added that Dativa’s team has “powerful expertise right across the TV market” and works with “every type of TV data” – spanning smart TVs, over-the-top and set-top box data.

Weiss said: “The launch of the Dativa brand is the natural next stage in the transformation of our offering and we are excited to continue building our data science capabilities as we grow even further.

“Michael’s expertise in the application of census TV data and broad contacts across the North American market will help Dativa to accelerate our growth and focus in the region, and deliver a fresh, innovative outlook to professional services.”