JC Clarke

VP, Agency Growth Pathlabs

JC Clarke has been solving problems for and with his advertising and technology partners for over 25 years. He is a solutions-focused dynamic business partner and thought leader with a midwestern inspired view of the market.

Currently, JC serves as the VP of Agency Growth at Pathlabs, a Media Execution Partner. Prior to Pathlabs, JC was a driving force behind the market-facing efforts for Engine Media Solutions / EMX, an end-to-end programmatic exchange, and data platform, where he was both the CTV Commercial Lead, as well as the SVP of Enterprise Media Solutions. In a fast paced environment requiring the business to pivot frequently, JC created processes, team structure, and GTM to provide agility in response to the dynamic nature of the business, while focused on CTV. In response to a shrinking ad market, and increased consolidation, JC was able to identify our core defensible strengths, and use to drive enterprise partnerships with the advertisers and agencies where we can consolidate greater spend, and provide bespoke value, leading to individual deals of $30M+.

JC has been in the middle of two of the most important challenges facing advertisers today: cross screen measurement and creating engaging and data driven creative executions leveraging marketing and consumer data. JC worked with Innovid and Samba TV, two of the most pioneering ad tech firms in the space, bringing new solutions to the market to solve for longstanding industry problems. While at Innovid, they brought forward an ad serving technology that allowed for cross screen delivery and measurement to look at all digital video delivery holistically, including CTV, thus making it easier to look at video holistically. They also pioneered the use of data to dynamically version creative in real time to make every impression addressable.

Separately, while at Samba, they were disrupting the status quo of TV Measurement while launching new cross screen (TV + OTT) solutions to look at both cross screen incremental reach, but also cross screen attribution. While this was driving significant adoption with media agencies, JC and Samba also developed a new offering, data as a service, helping brands and agencies build their own media planning and attribution solutions. A major milestone in the business, and one that lead to tremendous profitability and sustainable growth.

Throughout his career, JC has bridged, built, managed and led a variety of media businesses from varied and iconic brands such as Time Inc. Lifestyle Digital, NBCU, and CNET, to now Pathlabs. An avid backcountry trout fisherman and skier, JC is an expert sailor and wilderness first responder. He graduated from University of Kansas (go Jayhawks!) and lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife and three children.