Speakers

Digiday Exchange | August 15, 2013 | New York

Digiday’s conferences are editorially programmed to provide honest dialogue about important issues facing digital media -- with a specific focus on brands, advertisers and agencies. Digiday welcomes speaker submissions for those willing to take a stand on important, and sometimes controversial, topics. To be considered as a speaker, please provide your name, title and company, along with links to the most relevant content highlighting your positions on industry issues. Please note which conference for which you’d like to be considered.

To suggest a speaker or topic, email Erika@digiday.com no later than 6/7/12.

Speakers Include:

	*Rich Antoniello, CEO, Complex Media* Recognizing that consumers were migrating online for content, Rich oversaw the Complex's expansion onto the Web with the launch of Complex.com. In 2007, he formed Complex Media Network (www.complexmedianetwork.com), which is currently comprised of 100-plus sites targeted toward men to find the latest entertainment, gaming, sports, fashion and product news. Under his direction, CMN has experienced 150-plus percent revenue growth over the past three years and has increased its audience from 9 million to 48 million unique monthly visitors and from 92 million to 518 million page views. Prior Complex, he spent four years at National Geographic Adventure magazine, where he created the National Geographic Adventure Gorge Games in association with NBC, and saw 35 percent growth in revenue year-over-year during his time there. He began his career at Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, where he handled media planning for Proctor & Gamble, Sauza and Paddington Brands.
	*Orchid Burnside, director of digital operations, Hearst Digital Media* In this role, Orchid Burnside is responsible for leading and coordinating sales operations and client services across all of Hearst Digital's online properties. Prior to joining Hearst, she severed as senior director of advertising operations & strategy for BET Networks within the Digital Group. While there, she led the operational management of BET Digital's advertising network, which includes BET Mobile, BET.com, CentricTV.com and 287+ other online publishers, through the continuous refinement of best practices and partnership development. Orchid has also served in management roles at other leading digital companies including Everyday Health, Singer Direct (a Omnicom Media Group Company) and Multimedia Solutions.
	*Raj Chauhan, president, North America, Adslot* Raj Chauhan is an entrpreneur with over 15 years experience in online media and technology. In his current role, Raj is responsible for all Adslot operations in North America, including the company's 2012 launch in the US and Canada. Most recently, Raj was general manager of publisher business at OpenX. Previous to that he held multiple roles at the Rubicon Project, including vp of global demand and vp of North American sales. Prior to enterprise technology, Raj founded first-generation ad networks. He also held publisher sales roles at Yahoo and Move.
	*Peter Colapietro, associate media director, SapientNitro* Peter specializes in digital media across multiple channels. He has over six years of experience working within strategy, planning and execution across brands such as Citigroup, Prudential, MetLife, Chase, Foot Locker and Bertucci's. In Peter's work, he approaches business challenges through the lens of media delivery from brand awareness to direct response and everything in between. His high-level strategies are subsequently aligned and transformed into tactical plans ready to be executed in the marketplace. Peter is SapientNitro's resident optimization expert, focused on fusing and synthesizing technology and data with in-market activity against conversion metrics. He also leads innovation opportunities within the paid social media space as well as pioneering large scale strategies within digital video.
	*Sam Cox, vp publisher and business development, OpenX* Sam Cox is a results-driven technology executive with a focus on advertising optimization. He currently serves as svp of publisher services and business development for the server-side yield optimization platform LiftDNA. Prior to LiftDNA, Sam was founder and CEO of Milabra, the first company in the world to successfully use visual data to improve display advertising performance and targeting. Before Milabra, he was a technology analyst at a boutique NYC merchant bank, The Loughlan Group, investing in technology and media ventures.
	*Mac Delaney, vp, brand relations, VivaKi Nerve Center* In his current role, Mac manages the day-to-day relationships of Audience On Demand's (AOD) agency clientele by delivering client-driven solutions through strategic consultation. Most recently, Mac managed display performance for the central region of News Corp's FOX Audience Network after opening up regional operations for John Battelle's Federated Media and for Digg.com. His previous work experience also includes roles with Microsoft Advertising, where he managed the ROI division for display and search marketers, and Yahoo, where he created Yahoo's first performance display group catering specifically to online direct marketers. Mac began his career with 24/7 Media in its media sales division.
	*Barry Lowenthal, president, The Media Kitchen* Barry Lowenthal is the president of The Media Kitchen, a kbs+ agency, and also oversees the kbs+ Business Intelligence group and kbs+ Atlanta. A veteran of the agency with 20+ years under his belt, Barry has led integrated programs for brands such as Armani Jeans, Victoria's Secret, Justin Bieber's Fragrance "Someday," Vanguard and many others. Barry has worked in luxury goods, business consultancy, consumer electronics and spirits. Barry began his career at New York's agencies such as NW Ayer, Backer Spielvogel and Grey before coming to kbs+. Under Barry's leadership, The Media Kitchen diversified and grew its client base and staff and built an industry-recognized digital media capability. In 2008, Barry co-founded Madison Avenue's first trading desk, Varick Media Management. In 2010, he oversaw the merger of Fletcher Martin in Atlanta into kbs+, giving TMK its first office outside New York as well as full-service TV- and radio-buying capabilities.
	*Michael Leo, CEO & president, Operative* With Mike at the helm, Operative has experienced revenue growth for the past six consecutive years. Prior to Operative, Mike co-founded aQuantive, 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 Yorkers in digital media for two consecutive years, and AlwaysOn and KPMG named Mike as one of the 10 executives in the first annual Madison Avenue IT list.
	*Sara Livingston, manager of digital marketing, Seamless* Sara Livingston oversees consumer-targeted digital marketing at Seamless. This encompasses all acquisition & brand awareness initiatives spanning across online, mobile and tablet, including display, search, radio, affiliates and integrated partnerships. Prior to joining Seamless, Sara managed digital media at TheLadders, overseeing all direct response campaigns. Additionally, Sara has spent time on the agency side, working on digital media strategy for clients across a variety of verticals including financial services, CPG, education, travel and health care.
	*Jonathan Mendez, CEO, Yieldbot* Jonathan is the founder and CEO of Yieldbot, the first technology that directly connects the intent of publisher visitors in real time to search and keyword buyers. Prior to Yieldbot, Jonathan was CSO of Offermatica (now Adobe Test & Target) for two years through its acquisition by Omniture. Before Offermatica, he was buying millions of dollars of search advertising on behalf of leading brands in auto, finance, EDU & B2B. For the two years prior to his SEM work, he was a senior consultant for user experience at Creative Good. Jonathan started his digital life as Founder and CEO of Vitaminlab.com. He has worked with over 75 businesses to better understand the intentions of their visitors and optimize digital performance, including Amazon.com, Ameriprise, Disney, Citibank, H&R Block, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Monster.com, Sears, Skype and T-Mobile and publishers including the Washington Post, New York Times, FT, Tech Target, CNET & Meredith.
	*Eran Metzer, senior director, global solutions, Right Media* Working closely with product, engineering and partner management teams, Eran enables scale and performance for the Right Media ecosystem and its clients by addressing market needs and developing new markets and tools, including capabilities such as real-time integration, data sharing and external optimization.
	*Megan Pagliuca, vp and general manager of digital media, Merkle* Megan Pagliuca joined Merkle in November 2010 to develop and launch the Merkle trading desk. As vp and general manger of the digital media group, she launched the trading desk and built an industry-leading team, delivering targeted media programs, insights and measurement to leading brands such as GEICO, Motorola Mobility, Nespresso and AARP. In her role, Megan is responsible for client relationships, technology, data and inventory partnerships, product development and the growth and profitability of the digital media practice. Prior to joining Merkle, Megan led the professional services team at the Right Media Exchange, a Yahoo company. She was responsible for Right Media's demand-side-platform relationships, including brands such as P&G, as well as consulting services for the Agency Trading desks. Previously, she led the publisher services team, which included the deployment and integration of Yahoo APAC & EU on to the Right Media platform.
	*John Ramey, Founder & CEO, isocket* isocket is John's third successful marketing startup, with 12 years of product strategy, design, engineering and marketing experience. Having previously founded an online marketing demand-side service business for SMBs and a product business for offline real estate marketing, John left school to launch isocket, becoming one of the youngest entrepreneurs in the world to raise a round of VC funding in 2009.
	*Jeremy Randol, sales director, NBCUniversal Audience Platform* Jeremy Randol has spent the last 11 years in various leadership roles within the online industry. He joined the NBCUniversal Audience Platform team two years ago to help build and drive advertising sales across programmatic and non-programmatic channels. Prior to joining NBC Universal, Jeremy was the director of Northeast advertising sales at Thomson Reuters, director of online sales as Euromoney Institutional Investor, account executive at Unicast and account executive at the Industry Standard.
	*Sunil Sharma, CEO, InferSystems* As CEO of InferSystems, interactive veteran Sunil Sharma is responsible for setting and executing the company's strategic vision and delivering its math-based optimization products to clients across the media and advertising supply chain. Prior to InferSystems, Sunil was director of trading at Adnetik, where he launched and oversaw the Global Trading Group and helped guide the development of Adnetik's industry-leading demand-side platform. Sunil has also innovated on the supply side of the equation, providing executive-level consultation in pricing, yield, strategy, sales and organizational design to premium publishers. He possesses a deep understanding of key issues impacting all facets of today's complicated media ecosystem. Earlier in his career, Sunil led global Market Intelligence teams at IBM, one of which developed and deployed the company's first systematic strategy for value based strategic pricing.
	*Vikram Somaya, vp, global operations and audience, Consumer Media-Thomson Reuters* Vikram Somaya currently serves as vp, global operations and audience for the Consumer Media division of Thomson Reuters. In this role, he manages global revenue operations, ad operations, research, analytics, audience data and automated monetization for the 17 global Reuters.com sites. Prior to moving into the publishing world, Vikram served as managing director, strategic partnerships at BlueKai. He has spent most of his 13-year career in the startup world, having served in various business development, strategic partnership and operations roles at Milabra, Phorm, Operative and Audience Science after starting out in the ad agency world at Cliff Freeman and Partners.
	*Mark Trefgarne, CEO, LiveRail* Mark is CEO and Co-Founder of LiveRail, the world's largest real-time online video ad platform. LiveRail's technology sits at the heart of the online video advertising ecosystem, delivering over 3 billion video ad impressions per month for the industry's premier publishers, ad networks and agencies. Prior to LiveRail, Mark was managing director of Cleartide, a London-based web development and internet strategy consultancy.
	*Mark S. Zagorski, CEO, eXelate* As CEO, Mark brings more than 14 years of digital marketing experience to his leadership role. Mark is responsible for spearheading corporate growth and fueling the strategic vision of eXelate's industry-standard data engine. In May 2008, Mark led eXelate's U.S. launch and has been instrumental in growing the company's data footprint to over 200M UV, building the leading publisher-focused data delivery platform and closing $16M in Series B funding. Previously, Mark was CMO and corporate evp of MediaSpan, where he led all marketing and business development activity. Prior to MediaSpan, he was a founder and president of WorldNow. Mark started his online career as a group director at Modem Media - Poppe Tyson, where his clients included IBM, HSBC, Standard & Poors and Priceline.