Dave Clark

Dave Clark is a leader at the intersection of technology and media. He is passionate about building and leading high performing teams that seek capture the opportunities inherent in an industry being “eaten by software.” He has started two tech companies, ran and reset two TV brands as they were being disrupted by the internet (Fuse TV/music and The Weather Channel), run local, national and international advertising sales teams and most recently lead FreeWheel, an enterprise software and media company now at the heart of the video industry’s transition to scaled automated transaction s and campaign management.

Dave joined Comcast in 2017 as executive vice president of advanced advertising to oversee Comcast Cable’s advertising technology business. In this role, he lead the effort to bring together the people, assets and capabilities of five acquisitions Comcast had made in the space (StickyAds, Strata, Visible World, AdDazzle and FreeWheel) under one brand as FreeWheel, A Comcast Company. In 2020 he acquired and integrated Beeswax to strengthen FreeWheel’s buy-side capabilities. Today FreeWheel is unified 1500 person global operation.

During this period, Dave lead the strategy and direction for the global organization, driving a transition from a collection of software businesses serving different parts of the ecosystem to one focused on creating a unified marketplace for buyers and sellers of premium video. While managing the integration of the various assets, he reset the Freewheel brand in the marketplace, competed against Google for adserving dominance in premium video (and won), drove the transition to unifying addressable inventory across linear and digital, and built and launched differentiated programmatic capabilities that led to FreeWheel becoming the largest source of programmatic revenue for its publisher clients. In his time, FreeWheel more than doubled revenue, achieved profitability and is now enjoying accelerating growth.

Prior to FreeWheel, Dave was president of The Weather Channel, where he helped lead the company through a transition to a data-lead digital-first company. He re-tooled the network’s operations so it could reverse a decade-long decline in ratings and capture shifting audience attention. An early leader in addressable and programmatic capabilities, The Weather Channel today is a state-of-the-art, low-cost content powerhouse able to deliver content and advertising at the household level and on any device. He oversaw the creation and launch of LocalNow, a local news streaming service found in the basic packages of YouTubeTV, Sling and top AVOD services. During his tenure, he led the company to earn the moniker “Most Trusted Brand on TV” (Harris/EquiTrend) as well as the “Fifth Most Trusted Brand in America” (Morning Consult), and to win its first Emmys, including The Governor’s Award for Excellence from The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Before TWC, Dave served as general manager of Fuse TV, The Madison Square Garden Company’s national cable music network. With Dave at the helm, little Fuse won the prestigious 2013 Gold PromaxBDA award for Network Rebrand of the Year and established itself as a leader in online music news and live events, including the largest ever live music event on YouTube. He also led MSG’s effort to develop integrated sales and partnership strategies across the company’s brand portfolio in sports and entertainment. Dave previously served as a co-founder of Joost, an early premium video streaming product he developed with the founders of Skype. He began his career in media at Viacom/MTV Networks where he started and led the company’s global marketing partnerships sales group.

He has spoken at major industry events and conferences and has been quoted/featured in media outlets spanning The WSJ, Business Insider, Advertising Age, Adweek, AdExchanger, Variety and more. In 2019, Business Insider named him one of the “Power Players of Comcast” and he has twice been named by CableFax as among “The 100 Most Influential People in Media.”

Dave has served on various for-profit and non-profit boards, including board chair for Blockgraph, an “identity operating system” for CTV, and a board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, an organization he has been involved with for over two decades. He is an angel investor and advisor to various start-ups.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and political science from Tulane University, and has completed the CTAM Executive Management Program at Harvard Business School.

He resides in the New York City area with his family.