Speakers

2009 Speakers

Noah Brier
Head of Strategy
The Barbarian Group

Noah likes the Internet a lot. Which is a good thing, because so does The Barbarian Group, where he leads the strategic planning department. In his spare time he also runs Brand Tags, a digital experiment in brand perception and Likemind, a global coffee morning meet-up with locations in 50+ cities around the world. Prior to joining The Barbarian Group, Noah was a strategist at Naked Communications. This year he was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business and one of four social media innovators by BusinessWeek. He blogs at NoahBrier.com.

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Kamal Chadha
Director of Ad Platform Strategy
CBS Interactive

Kamal Chadha is Director of Ad Platform Strategy at CBS Interactive (previously CNET Networks), where she has been working for the past 12 years. She oversees product management for Madison, CBSi’s in-house ad serving system, which she has been responsible for since its inception. Kamal has helped lead the vision for creating a world class ad system encompassing the Trafficking, Rich Media, Delivery, and Inventory areas.  She works closely with sales and engineering to establish the product road map and to build and maintain a competitive and high performing ad system. She is also responsible for evaluating vendor technologies and integrating vendor products.

Kamal previously managed the Ad Technology Engineering group at CNET Networks and has consulted at AT&T and Mint Investment Management Company in NJ.

Kamal holds a management degree from the Wharton Business School and an MS in Computer Science from NJIT.

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In his current role as Executive Vice President, Global Digital Officer, David Cohen’s central goal is to spearhead Universal McCann’s digital and alternative media offering across the globe and to accelerate, integrate, and intensify a digital best practice throughout the UM universe.

David started the digital practice in 2001 as Interactive Media Director, joining UM from Zentropy Partners, a standalone digital marketing consultancy in the IPG family. In 2002, he became a Senior Vice President, overseeing all digital media strategy, planning, buying, and analysis operations for the New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco offices. In March 2006, he was named U.S. Director of Digital Communications and in April 2011 he was promoted to his present position.

Under David’s leadership, UM was recognized as one of OMMA’s Agency of the Year winners for Best Media Planning & Buying. David was also named an “Online All-Star” by Media Magazine. He currently oversees the efforts of Sony, Johnson & Johnson, Chrysler, MasterCard, BMW, U.S. Army, Kohl’s, Applebee’s, and Brown Forman, representing well over $1 billion in digital billings.

David was elected to Chairman of the $A's (American Association of Advertising Agencies) Digital Marketing Committee in April 2009. He has also been at the helm of the industry initiative “Project Reinvention,” a joint taskforce between the 4A's and IAB designed to improve business process and efficiency in the digital industry. David often speaks at seminars and lectures and is frequently quoted in the trade press, as well as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

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Adrian D’Souza
Director, Media Revenue Operations
Google
Co-Chair, IAB Ad Operations Council

Adrian D’Souza, Director of Advertising Operations at Google, Inc. is responsible for all post-buy campaign execution in Google’s online non-search businesses. He is also responsible for leveraged services like Partner Support, Yield Management and Technical Media Support and for certifying new rich media technologies. He has actively served on the Ad Ops Council as both member and co-chair for over two years.

Prior to this, he was Vice President of Advertising Operations at CNET Networks and was responsible for evaluating, defining and implementing new ad opportunities and technologies across CNET Network properties and defining Rich Media strategy from an advertising perspective. He led a team of product managers and engineers who deploy new ad opportunities across the multiple properties of CNET Networks. Prior to joining CNET Networks, D’Souza served as the Director of Product Management at Engage Media. He oversaw the product strategy for B2B and B2C products and was responsible for implementing new and exploring emerging technologies in Internet, wireless and streaming media applications. Prior to that, he managed a worldwide product line of enterprise management hardware and software products for American Power Conversion Corp.

D’Souza received a MBA from the R.B. Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech and a degree in Engineering from the University of Poona in India.

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Rob Deichert
Senior Vice President, Global Sales Development and Operations
AOL Advertising

As Senior Vice President, Global Sales Development, Rob Deichert manages the strategy and operational monetization of AOL's owned and operated inventory. In this role, Rob and his team focus on ensuring they have industry leading advertising solutions across AOL Media as well as ensuring they achieve operational excellence in delivering these solutions to clients. Rob held various roles prior at Advertising.com which covered sales, media buying and business operations. Prior to joining Advertising.com in 2000, Rob held roles at Mars & Co., a boutique strategy consulting firm. Rob received a BA degree, with departmental honors and Phi Beta Kappa, in Economics from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA degree from the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

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Mark Ellis
Executive Vice President, Sales
AOL Advertising

Mark Ellis is Executive Vice President, Sales, for AOL.  Based in New York, he is responsible for North American display advertising revenue across AOL’s 90+ owned and operated web properties (including AOL.com, AIM, Mapquest, Moviefone, Fanhouse, Asylum, Lemondrop, Engadget, Daily Finance, AOL Latino and Black Voices), Advertising.com (the leading display network on the web) and several ancillary products and networks (behavioral targeting, affiliate, SEM, AOL Search Marketplace, Bid Place, video, mobile, sponsored listings, etc.).  He oversees the National Sales team (11 regional offices), Account Management, Network/Product Sales, Homepage and Multicultural Sales and Agency and Inside Sales.  His team focuses on creating and delivering best-in-class digital marketing solutions for client and agency partners who want to engage with their key customers and extend marketing messages efficiently and effectively.  Mark joined AOL in early 2004 as Vice President, Detroit Region, and subsequently managed the Central Sales Division, the Eastern Sales Division and the Vertical and Product Sales teams.  Before joining AOL, he was Senior Vice President, Corporate and Digital Sales, for sports marketing firm IMG and before that was Senior Vice President, Sales, for Internet startup Quokka Sports. That followed 8 years with Time Inc. where he held a variety of positions including Publisher of Time Inc. New Media, Publishing Director for Sports Illustrated and Detroit Manager Sports Illustrated.  He began his career in account management at advertising agencies Bozell and D’Arcy.

Mark graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in Marketing and received his MBA from the University of Detroit. He serves on the AAF Hall of Fame and Hall of Achievement judging committees, is a former member of the Adcraft Club board of directors, was Co-Founder and Treasurer of 313 Digital and is a former board member of the IAB.

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Marc Formisano
Director of Product Management
MediaBank

As Director of Product Management at MediaBank LLC, Marc is the business and design lead for their Vendor Portal electronic business and efficiencies platform. Marc brings over 18 years of business and systems experience on both the buy and sell sides of media management operations. He has understood the challenge associated with process inefficiencies and discrepant business by working at such organizations as MTV Networks and Petry Media Corporation as well as implementing beneficial system solutions at such companies as Mediaplex, Harris and eMadison. His distinguished career also included working participation in industry EDI efforts at the IAB, AAAA’s, TVB, CAB, MPA and RAB.

Marc is a graduate of New York Institute of Technology and holds a BA in Management of Information Systems.

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Eric Goldsmith
Operations Architect, Web Performance
AOL Advertising

Eric Goldsmith, Operations Architect at AOL, has more than 20 years of experience providing technical leadership in the areas of product development, engineering and operations. At AOL he has led efforts to deliver the highest levels of performance and availability for top Web sites, including: AOL.com; AIM.com; and AOL Video; among others.

His areas of expertise include Performance Analysis, Capacity Planning, Network Engineering, and Software Development. Prior to AOL, Eric worked for companies such as UUNet, WorldCom and CompuServe, as well as telecom and Internet startups. He holds a BS in Computer Science from The Ohio State University.

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Moinul Haque
Project Manager
Univision Interactive Media

Moinul Haque, Project Manager at Univision Interactive Media, manages the business solutions group focused on development of the internal ad sales planning, order, and billing systems, along with integrating with CRM and business intelligence initiatives.

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Pramod Khincha
Senior Manager, Systems and Tools
Yahoo!

As Senior Manager, Systems and Tools at Yahoo, I oversee the implementation of tools and services to ensure creative quality and security for all of Yahoo! advertising systems.  My main expertise in building simple solutions – tools and service solutions for measuring ad performance, quantifying ad security and quality. Some of the tools I have built are YSlow, Internal tools for virus scanning, and malware detection.

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In his role as Chief Executive Officer and President of Operative, Mike Leo has utilized his entrepreneurial drive and vision to spearhead corporate growth. With Mike at the helm, Operative has experienced revenue growth for the past six consecutive years and recruited some of advertising’s most recognizable talent. Mike’s leadership style and industry perspective is based on more than 17 years at the executive level at some of the most prestigious marketing and media companies in the digital world.

He is consistently cited by interactive media and marketing industry publications such as BusinessWeek, DigiDay and iMedia Connection on trends, best practices, and cutting-edge innovation in digital advertising. Mike is also a regular speaker at IAB, iMedia, AdMonsters, Venture Capital, and DM2Pro conferences, where he lends his passion for the space and perspective on disruptive, bleeding-edge solutions for media companies and their partners.

Prior to Operative, Mike cofounded aQuantive (NASDAQ: AQNT), a digital marketing organization now owned by Microsoft that became one of the industry’s biggest success stories. He assembled the team that helped to grow aQuantive to one of the best and largest interactive agencies in the world.

Silicon Alley Insider ranked Mike as one of the top 100 most influential New Yorker’s in digital media for two consecutive years and AlwaysOn and KPMG named him as one of the ten executives in the first annual Madison Avenue IT list.

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Grace Liau leads the Ad Operations Center of Excellence for the VivaKi Nerve Center. The Ad Operations Center of Excellence (Ad Ops COE) is an internal consultancy focused on establishing a community of world-class digital advertising professionals that develop and lead digital ad operations best practices across VivaKi. In her role, she is responsible for supporting the VivaKi agency teams by assessing and integrating best-in-class technology partners that generate efficiencies in the implementation, procurement and optimization of digital advertising.

Grace is a digital marketing pioneer; driving client businesses with the latest media technologies and helping them keep tabs on the developments.

Prior to VivaKi, she spent time at Digitas, where she led the Media Operations & Technology practice. Developing many bespoke strategies for clients and leading their Advanced Targeting technologies work.

Prior to Digitas, she worked at Family Education Network where she was responsible for yield management, monetizing and setting ad product strategy for all of the company’s sites. She oversaw the integrating of the company's eleven sites into the extended Family Education Network.

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Marc Lucas, an award-winning creative leader with top credentials in both digital and traditional advertising, took up his new post of Chief Creative Officer of kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners in January 2010.

In this role, Marc oversees the digitally integrated creative output for kbs+p, a unique marriage of data driven behavioral insights, technology and creativity across the entire client ecosystem of marketing assets. In the true spirit of integration, he also serves as creative leader for kbs’ partner companies Dotglu, LIME pr + promotions and Company C.

Previously, he served as Executive Creative Director for Razorfish, New York, working with blue chip clients like Unilever (AXE), Mercedes Benz USA, Panasonic, and Shering-Plough. He also led the development of Ralph Lauren's Rugby brand's first iPhone app and touch-screen window display.

At SS+K, a media agnostic creative think-tank, Marc expanded his expertise into gaming, events, mobile and more, working with clients like Song Airlines, Delta Airlines, The New York Knicks. He was creative director on The Lance Armstrong Foundation [aka LiveStrong], and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

As Executive Creative Director of D’Arcy Hong Kong, Marc rebuilt an underperforming agency into a profitable and creatively regarded one. Within two years the agency had won Gold and Silver at the One Show, was recognized at The Cannes International Advertising Festival, was the second most awarded in the D’Arcy global network, ranked the third best creative agency in Asia, attracting business and talent, and was showing good financial results.

Previously, Marc was Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy Philippines, an agency with a strong culture, a passionate team, and some faded glory. Within two years the agency was named “Creative Agency of the Year” by the Philippine Advertising Congress and was featured in the local business press. Before becoming a creative director Marc was an award winning copywriter at Ogilvy New York, Chiat/Day New York, The Ball Partnership Hong Kong.

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Bryant Mason
Principal Test Managers
Microsoft Advertising

Bryant Mason is a Principal Test Manager with the Microsoft Advertising Research and Development Group, where he is responsible for performance engineering. He has been optimizing large-scale Internet services at Microsoft since the late 90s and over the past nine years he has been busy building advertising platforms that handle tens of billions of requests each day. When not working on the next generation advertising platform for Microsoft, he contributes to industry standards for on-line ad performance and was recently a panelist at the 2009 Velocity web performance and operations conference.

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Ramsey McGrory is Vice President, North American Marketplaces, Yahoo!, which includes display, search and video to create winning product and solution strategies based on customer needs and marketplace dynamics. Ramsey is specifically responsible for establishing and growing Yahoo!’s strategic use of data and insights. Prior to this role, he was responsible for strategic relationships with major agency holding companies as part of the U.S. partnerships team, he also led a team that drove participation and growth of the of the Right Media Exchange, which Yahoo! acquired in 2007.

With ten years of online media, banking and military experience, Ramsey brings a diverse background to his role. He is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and the early days of the Internet, and thrives in chaotic, fast-paced environments. Before joining Right Media, he worked in media and technology sales at DoubleClick and Excite. He also spent six years at NationsBank and at Citigroup, in the Treasury and Derivatives Trading Groups, focused on Internet banking and credit/debt derivatives structuring. He was in the military from 1985-1993.

Ramsey is based in New York City. He received an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of the South, and a Master's degree in Management from Georgia Tech. He is active in the William J. Clinton Foundation and sits on the board of The Jericho Project.

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Tim Messier
Director, Pricing & Inventory
The Weather Channel

Tim Messier is Director, Pricing and Inventory for TWC Media Solutions, where he has been for 10 years. TWC Media Solutions is the ad sales and sales support arm of The Weather Channel Companies. He oversees yield management and pricing for all of the organization's digital products, which include weather.com, Intellicast, and Desktop Weather, as well as other emerging platforms. Always in sales support roles at TWCC, Tim has also had responsibility for the organization's ad serving infrastructure, and business analytics functions.  

Prior to joining The Weather Channel Companies, Tim was with The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, helping to launch their first digital products.  

Tim is a graduate of the University of Florida and holds a BA in Decision and Information Systems.

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Becky Minervino
VP, Group Strategy Director
McKinney

Becky Minervino hails from McKinney where she is Vice President, Group Strategy Director managing GNC, Gold’s Gym, and Mizuno. Her experience includes more than 11 years in the digital arena and a foundation in brand advertising and direct marketing.  She was responsible for the launch of Virgin Atlantic’s first mobile marketing program, which earned a Gold MIXX award, and has managed digital strategy for brands such as MINI, IKEA, and NIKE.

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John Montgomery has held the position of Chief Operating Officer of GroupM Interaction in North America since 2008.  In this role he leads GroupM’s privacy and data strategy for digital and works closely with industry bodies that help set policy in these areas.

GroupM Interaction is now a network of more than 750 digital specialists across North America.  It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including MediaCom, Maxus, Mediaedge:CIA and Mindshare.

Previously, John held the title of Global Chief Executive Officer of Mindshare Interaction, the agency’s digital center of excellence.  Before that he led mOne in North America, the interactive media practice for Mindshare and Ogilvy.

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Dan Murphy
Senior Vice President, Interactive Research and Analytics
Univision Interactive Media
Co-Chair, IAB Ad Operations Council

Dan Murphy, Senior Vice President, Research and Ad Traffic, at Univision Interactive Media, has served as Co-Chair for the IAB Ad Operations Council since its inception.  He has been active in the interactive world since 1994 working with Sportsline (CBS Digital), Relevant Knowledge (comScore MediaMetrix), and Univision Interactive Media.  He also serves on the Council for Research Excellence, IAB Research Advisory Board, and MRC Internet Committee.  He received dual Masters degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology in Statistics and Electrical Engineering.

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Kelly Petersen
iDesk Product Development Director
Donovan Data Systems

As Director, iDesk Product Development at DDS, Kelly Petersen manages the development of the company’s digital media buying system. Kelly and her team in Europe and North America work with agencies and other stakeholders in the digital buying community to create a system that meets the industry's need for efficient digital buying.

Kelly has led her team in meeting a rapid deployment schedule. Within one year of development, iDesk is now in use at several leading digital agencies. A key development feature of iDesk is its unique capability to update the financial system when changes are made to the buy. Another key component is the ability to link electronically to other parties involved in the digital buy, such as sites and ad servers.

Before running iDesk development, Kelly was Product Director for print and out-of-home at DDS. Her detailed knowledge of this market, coupled with long-term experience in running dynamic projects and meeting pressing deadlines, made Kelly the obvious choice to lead the iDesk team.

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Geoff Petkus
Senior Director, Product Management
Operative

Geoff is a respected online advertising veteran, bringing to Operative more than 15 years experience and a firsthand understanding of publishers’ needs for effectively running their business.  As Senior Director of Product Management, Geoff guides Operative’s market strategy for the software suite domestically and internationally; acts as a liaison between sales and development; and is continually developing solutions to ongoing publisher challenges. Geoff is also an active participant in industry-wide efforts, and received an IAB Service Excellence Award in 2009 for his contributions to the IAB E-business Interactive Standards initiative.

Geoff joined Operative from Interactive Corporation (IAC) where he was Director of Sales Development.  There, he was responsible for the online advertising strategy of properties such as Ticketmaster, Match.com, Expedia and Evite.  Prior to his time with IAC, Geoff served as Director of Advertising Systems at Edmunds.com.

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Steve Robinson
President & Founder
Panache

Seeing the need for an effective advertising revenue model for video in the media and entertainment eco-system, Steve started Panache in 2006. Since then, Panache has been building sell-side software solutions for linear television and successfully applying the same principles to online video for major publisher clients. Steve has always been at the forefront of technical innovation, designing and implementing best-of-breed technologies to solve business problems for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.  
 
In 1996, Steve founded Panache's parent company, Panther Software, to develop mission-critical, high-performance data exchange software, video delivery and advertising solutions for enterprises such as Motorola, Viacom, Microsoft, NASA, Citicorp, EDS, and Ticketmaster. Under Steve’s leadership, Panther Software grew to a multi-million dollar sale company.

While at Panther, Steve’s work in component object modeling and disparate systems connectivity was published in numerous periodicals. Since starting Panache, he has been a frequent contributor to new media publications such as MediaPost and regularly speaks at industry events, including OMMA, NAB, IAB and Digital Hollywood.

Steve is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Florida with a degree in Finance and Accounting.

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Steve Sullivan currently leads the IAB West Coast office as Vice President, Advertising Technology. He draws on his deep expertise in online advertising technology to help the industry improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. He joined IAB from Microsoft Corporation, where he served as Senior Program Manager, Ad Security, within Microsoft’s Online Services Division.

In 2009, Steve was recognized with an IAB Service Excellence Award and has been an active member of IAB committees and working groups since 2005, including the Measurement Task Force and most recently the Ad Ops Council. His career in online advertising technology began in the late 1990s, and he has since earned an industry-wide reputation for working collaboratively with partners and competitors on standards, guidelines, and related data quality issues. Most recently he sat on the Board of Directors of the Media Rating Council (MRC) and was a member of its Internet Committee. Before joining Microsoft, he held positions at Atlas DMT (which was acquired by Microsoft in 2004), Foretelligence, Expedia, and BlueStreak.

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Todd Teresi
Vice President, General Manager, Media Solutions
Adobe

 

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As president of ValueClick Media, Bill Todd leads the organization in North America and serves on the executive management team of ValueClick, Inc.

Mr. Todd joined ValueClick in 2000 and has held numerous sales management roles throughout his tenure with the company, including director of eastern sales, vice president eastern sales and most recently senior vice president, sales North America. He was promoted to president in October, 2008.

Prior to joining ValueClick Mr. Todd was a senior account executive at leading radio representation firm Katz Radio in New York, where he sold national spot radio across 2,000 stations in the U.S.

Mr. Todd serves on the board of directors of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

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As Senior Vice President, Digital Director, Technology Activation Group, Julian Zilberbrand oversees the implementation and reporting of digital campaigns for clients across the global SMG network. In this role, he leads training on buying, planning, trafficking, and billing tools for all digital staff and manages digital and technology vendor relationships. In addition, Julian has helped lead and oversee the development of the Digital Mediabank platform throughout the entire Starcom MediaVest Group network in the U.S.

Before joining MediaVest in 2004, Julian held product specialist and client service specialist roles at rich media technology provider Eyeblaster and developed the company's Eyeblaster University training program. Earlier in his career, he worked at Doubleclick as a project manager and technical analyst, where he balanced product engineering and operational roles while providing support for clients on rich media, third party ad serving, and campaign reporting.