Comcast’s FreeWheel said it named Utpal Kalita as VP, engineering and chief technology officer for Blockgraph, which Comcast is trying to get the industry to adopt as a secure way to use data and share information for advanced TV advertising.
Kalita most recently had been chief technology officer of Eyeview Digital. Over a 20-year career, he also spent time at DoubleClick, now a part of Google, Tremor Video (now Telaria) and GroupM’s Xaxis division.
He reports to Jason Manningham, general manager of Blockgraph.
“In today’s data-driven age, our vision for creating Blockgraph was to offer the entire advertising ecosystem the ability to seamlessly provide marketers best-in-class data capabilities while protecting, first and foremost, consumer privacy,” Manningham said. “As we looked for a CTO to help us realize our transformative vision, it was critical to find a leader with a strong track record of leading and inspiring teams to pioneer and build large scale platforms and Utpal stood out.”
Comcast Advertising launched Blockgraph in 2017. In 2018 Blockgraph formed a peer-to-peer platform for securely sharing data needed for advanced television advertising. Viacom and Charter Communications are working with Comcast and FreeWheel on the initiative.
