About
Ashwin Desikan. Operator in sports, AdTech and identity, at home in more than one city.
I hold three passports and have spent my career building the data and identity systems that organizations depend on when they live or die by their audiences. That work has run across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, anchored in the two cities I call home, London and New York. Citizen of Nowhere is where that orientation becomes public work.
The arc runs from bioinformatics at Illumina, through London's early AdTech wave, across European markets with the global holding companies, into the platforms that now define the industry at Amazon, Spotify, and Facebook, and on to the major American sports leagues out of New York. The through-line never changed: treat audiences and places as measurable systems, then build the infrastructure and the commercial model to act on them.
Today I do that in two registers. Commercially, advising and leading on identity, data, and monetization on both sides of the Atlantic. And independently, building indices and writing about movement, measurement, and belonging. The phrase was meant as an insult. I kept it, because someone at home in more than one city, loyal to the idea rather than the flag, is not stateless. They simply see more of the map.
Impact at scale
Measured outcomes62
Clubs unified
League-scale identity and customer data platforms across every NFL and MLB club.
220M+
Identities resolved
Product owner of Samsung's identity-linked CDP on Google Cloud.
~99%
Data spend cut
Shifting Samsung from third-party to owned data, roughly 700,000 dollars out, while expanding reach.
+20%
Engagement lift
The Adobe Experience Platform rollout across MLB's 30 clubs.
+40%
YoY audience revenue
Audience-targeted revenue on Spotify's free tier, across a 500-person sales organization.
58
Markets activated
Rolling out Annalect's identity and measurement product suite across EMEA.
The leagues
League scale, in detailNational Football League
Director, Business Relationship Management & MarTech Products
- Unified fan identity and data across all 32 clubs into one league-scale operating model. The hard part was never the technology. It was getting 32 independent commercial entities to agree what a fan is and who may act on that.
- Authored the enterprise governance framework: privacy, consent, data standards, and cross-club integration.
- Modernized the league's AI, data, and Connected Identity platforms, with club toolkits and executive readouts that accelerated adoption.
Major League Baseball
Director, Marketing Tech & Digital Operations
- Built a customer data platform across all 30 clubs, a 10 million dollar-plus remit spanning CDP, clean rooms, email, SMS, push, and CTV.
- Drove the Adobe Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer rollout across all 30 clubs that lifted audience engagement 20 percent.
- Launched real-time, scan-triggered fan journeys; the Mets pilot deployed 12,000-plus push notifications in a season, with check-in click-through rising from roughly 4 to 9 percent.
- Authored the clean-room roadmap to monetize first-party data with sponsorship and media partners.
Platforms and holding companies
The other side of the tradeClean rooms and Connected Identity for 30+ global advertisers Amazon Ads
Directed more than 30 Tier 1 client partnerships architecting Connected Identity, clean-room, and advanced-measurement solutions on Amazon Marketing Cloud, driving cross-platform data collaboration and multi-million-dollar revenue growth.
Turning first-party audio data into ad revenue Spotify
Built the global audience-measurement and monetization frameworks used across a 500-person sales organization, partnering with 40-plus agencies and contributing to a 40 percent year-over-year increase in audience-targeted revenue on the free tier.
Samsung's customer data platform, built at population scale Digitas, Publicis Groupe
As VP of Data Strategy on Samsung's US account, led a multi-capability team of 20-plus as product owner of an identity-linked CDP resolving 220 million-plus identities on Google Cloud. The shift from third-party to owned data cut spend by roughly 700,000 dollars, about 99 percent, while expanding addressable reach.
Identity-linked data products across 58 markets Annalect, Omnicom Media Group
Led data science, analytics, and insight for Annalect EMEA, architecting and rolling out the suite of identity and measurement products, attribution, custom audiences, lookalike modeling, media-mix and TV attribution, across 58 markets.
Why work with me
Operator, not commentator
I have run the desk inside the leagues and the platforms, owning the operating model, not advising from the outside.
Independent of every vendor
I have written the requirements, run the RFP, negotiated the contract, and then owned the implementation. I resell nothing and take no referral fees. Where I advise a vendor on its product, I disclose it in writing before you sign anything.
Proof you can use
I build in public. The Global Metro Power Rankings and a working MarTech reference implementation are the studio behind the practice.
A network across the ecosystem
A career spent across leagues, holding companies, and platforms shortens every introduction and every deal.
I write and I teach
A public point of view on identity, data, and the AI era, carried through writing, keynotes, and board workshops.
Both sides of the trade
Platforms like Genius FANHub and Elevate EPIC monetize fan identity. I built the side of the trade the rights holder owns, and the demand side at Amazon that buys from it.
Currently