Tal Hayek
Co-founder & CEO at Upwave
Hayek is known for building Upwave into a leading brand lift measurement platform that gives advertisers a rigorous, data-driven way to measure the impact of campaigns on brand health metrics beyond performance and last-click attribution.
Last updated Apr 19, 2026 by AI Enrichment
Tal Hayek is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Upwave (formerly Survata), a leading brand measurement and analytics platform that helps advertisers quantify the true impact of their campaigns on brand health metrics such as awareness, consideration, and purchase intent. By moving the industry beyond last-click attribution, Hayek has positioned Upwave as a critical infrastructure layer for major brands and agencies seeking to understand how digital advertising drives real business outcomes. His work addresses one of the most persistent challenges in AdTech: proving that brand-building investments actually work. Hayek co-founded Survata in the early 2010s, originally building a survey-based research and data collection platform before pivoting and evolving the company into a full-fledged brand lift measurement solution. The company rebranded to Upwave to reflect its expanded focus on predictive brand analytics and real-time measurement capabilities. Under his leadership, Upwave has grown into a trusted measurement partner for Fortune 500 brands, major media agencies, and streaming platforms, integrating with leading DSPs and publishers to deliver campaign-level brand intelligence at scale. Hayek has been a consistent voice in the industry on the importance of upper-funnel measurement and the limitations of performance-only metrics. He has guided Upwave through the evolving privacy landscape, developing methodologies that maintain measurement fidelity even as third-party cookies and device identifiers face deprecation. His entrepreneurial journey reflects a broader industry shift toward valuing brand equity as a measurable, data-driven asset.
Co-founder & CEO
Survata (2012-2019)
- University degree details not publicly confirmed
- Co-founded Survata and evolved it into Upwave, a leading brand measurement platform used by major brands and agencies
- Secured partnerships with major DSPs, publishers, and streaming platforms to integrate brand lift measurement at scale
- Led company rebrand from Survata to Upwave to reflect expanded predictive brand analytics capabilities
- Built a measurement methodology that maintains efficacy in a cookieless, privacy-first advertising environment