Transparency, Accountability, and the Future of Ad Ops

Sam Cox is Senior Vice President of Product Management at Integral Ad Science. Based in New York City, Cox oversees global product strategy and execution for the Programmatic & Optimization Solutions product portfolio which includes industry-leading products such as Context Control, Quality Sync and Total Visibility.

A results-driven technology executive, Cox has nearly two decades of experience in advertising technology and exchange-based trading. He was most recently Director of Technical Product Management at Amazon where he oversaw Amazon DSP. In this role, he was globally responsible for Amazon’s Demand Side Platform as well as the development of Signals Based Marketing, its alternative to identity based targeting. Prior to Amazon, Sam led product for Google’s Ad Exchange (AdX), where he was Group Product Manager responsible forAuthorized Buyers, Exchange Bidding, Open Bidding and global Policy.

Cox has a Master of Business Administration in strategy from Bayes Business School in London, England and a Bachelor of Arts with honors in art history, economics and Chinese language from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

Andre De Castro is the CEO and Co-Founder of Blockchain of Things, Inc. He is a long-time crypto currency specialist who has an expert’s insight as to the field’s potential and is working towards making that potential a reality. Andre has been an active participant in the Bitcoin community and industry since 2010.

Andre’s experience includes being a software developer, investor, trader, advisor, and US policy influencer. He is an avid public speaker and panelist for financial technology events including GE Global Research, Perkins Coie, Wedbush, and the NY Bitcoin Center. His early grasp of the unrealized potential of blockchain technology to revolutionize multiple sectors of the industry led him to found Blockchain of Things in 2014, and drive the development of the Catenis EnterpriseTM platform.

Andre graduated with honors from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, earning a B.S. in Computer Science, with concentration in artificial intelligence. A prolific inventor, he is the holder of two U.S. patents that streamline the installation of electronic products in automotive circuits.

James Deaker is Vice President of Revenue Management and Ad Policy at Yahoo. He is responsible for advertising and data policy, search and display marketplaces, pricing and yield management. James is also chair of the IAB Ad Operations Council.

Prior to joining Yahoo, James led the Monetization Excellence group at Microsoft. Previously, he was Vice President of Advisory Services at San Francisco-based software company, Rapt Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.

James holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research from Stanford University.

Jonah Goodhart is the CEO and Co-Founder of Moat, a New York based Analytics company focused on driving success for brand marketers and premium publishers. Moat is at the forefront of helping shift digital advertising away from impressions and clicks and toward new models of attention. Jonah was the Founding Investor and Board Member of Right Media (acquired by Yahoo!), Founding Partner of WGI Group, and Co-Founder of Billions.org. Jonah was also a member of Mayor Bloomberg’s Council on Technology and Innovation.

Dave Helmreich is the LiveIntent Chief Operating Officer and manages LiveIntent’s strategic relationships with partners like: Criteo, Oracle, LiveRamp, Google, MediaMath, The Trade Desk and Salesforce, to name a few. Dave has been at the intersection of identity, audience targeting, and media for over ten years. Prior to joining LiveIntent, Dave was the CEO of Audience Partners, an advertising platform that helps marketers target media and advertising across a variety of digital channels. Before that, he also was a key part of industry innovation at TARGUSinfo where he built and launched one of the first audience targeting and data onboarding products for demand-side programmatic platforms. Dave also was the senior vice president and general manager of Neustar’s Media & Advertising business.

Dave is a former Naval Aviator, with a degree in Computer Science from the US Naval Academy and an MBA from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Dave lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife, Rachel, and their two children, Claire and Zack.

George is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Media Rating Council (MRC), a not-for-profit industry organization created in 1963 at the request of the U.S. Congress to assure high ethical and operational standards in audience measurement services. His background includes almost 30 years of experience in media research auditing, oversight, and consulting. Prior to being appointed the Executive Director of the MRC in January 2000, George was a partner at Ernst & Young and their lead representative and advisor to the MRC, conducting all MRC audits and interacting with MRC management and member organizations. George has a thorough knowledge of research best practices, operations, controls, and information systems in internet, multimedia, print, radio, and television measurement services.

Anthony Katsur is a media technology veteran with more than twenty-five years of executive leadership and operational experience at innovative technology companies in the digital media industry.

At Nexstar Digital, Anthony is responsible for leading all digital partnerships, corporate development and business operations across Nexstar Media Group’s portfolio of digital assets.

He most recently served as President of Sonobi, where he implemented strategy, recruited and led highly effective teams and drove partnerships with leading agencies, brands and media companies.

Prior to Sonobi, Anthony held global leadership roles at Rubicon Project as EVP of Business Operations and General Manager of Buyer Cloud. He also held global executive roles at MediaMath and Maxifier, where he served as CEO. Earlier in his career, he joined DoubleClick via the acquisition of NetGravity and quickly ascended to lead multiple product, operations and engineering divisions.

Anthony is an active participant at industry conferences, speaking about the latest trends in advertising at the National Association of Broadcasters, AdAge’s Brand Summit, Advertising Week, Broadcasting & Cable, AdMonsters and GABBCON. He has been quoted on industry trends and provided thought leadership in The Wall Street Journal, AdAge, Adweek, AdExchanger, MediaPost, Econsultancy and Digiday, among others.

As employee number three at Tapad, Kate has been instrumental in the company’s 70% YoY growth. She worked with Tapad’s founding members in the planning and creation of the company’s proprietary and award winning technology, The Device Graph™.

Now leading the company’s advertising business, Kate oversees Tapad’s Unify Platform, used to serve cross-screen advertising campaigns for marketers. Additionally, she leads product development, sales alignment and customer relationship management. One example is Tapad’s latest innovation, TV Pulse, which launched in June 2015. As the TV Pulse business lead, Kate oversees all initiatives that allow marketers to connect linear television data with digital campaigns — another first-of-its-kind for the industry.

As the head of the Media Business, Kate is an active contributor to the marketing tech space. She has been featured in MediaPost and Adotas, interviewed by industry trades, and has been on-stage with leading automotive brands at Motor City West. Kate was also interviewed and featured on BeetTV. Recently, Kate was named one of the “Top Women in Digital” by Cynopsis Media.

Before Tapad, Kate was a Product Director at MediaMath and a Lockheed Martin Senior Systems Engineer. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Systems Engineering from University of Virginia and a Masters of Science in eBusiness Technology from Carnegie Mellon.

As Tremor Video’s Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy, Kelly leads a team of product managers and user experience experts to drive the company’s product vision and strategy, and guide its execution from planning to delivery. She joined Tremor Video in April 2013 with over a decade of experience managing product development and deploying technology solutions into the digital advertising ecosystem across video and display.

She joined Tremor Video from Selectable Media, where she provided strategic direction for their proprietary video ad-serving platform. Prior to that, she held senior product positions at AdKeeper and Donovan Data Systems (now part of MediaOcean). While at Donovan Data Systems, she collaborated with DDS executives, business directors, and their client’s digital media directors to define and execute the product vision for iDesk (now MediaOcean Prisma), a digital media planning and buying platform that is now widely adopted within agencies worldwide.

Kelly holds a B.A. in English, and an M.A. in Rhetoric and Professional Communication from Iowa State University.

Brendan joined the internet revolution in 1998 with MediaHouse, a web analytics and network monitoring company sprung from the ashes of the BBS industry. Since then, he’s walked the fine line between luddite and technology evangelist, privacy advocate and targeting specialist. This has included work with Microsoft in their data collection and behavioral targeting branch, with Greenpeace in their public outreach branch, and with privacy-centric FOSS projects.

Nick is the Chief Technology Officer at The New York Times. Previously he was Chief Technology Officer of Condé Nast, and Digital CTO at MTV Networks. Throughout his career Nick has worked at the intersection of media and the Internet, building digital products for mass audiences. Today he is helping The New York Times transition from one of the news media’s most storied publishers to a truly modern, digital media company.

Susan Schiekofer is the Chief Digital Investment Officer for GroupM U.S. She is responsible for digital partnerships and trading across all of GroupM’s agencies including Mindshare, MediaCom, Wavemaker and Essence.

Susan’s digital skillset, coupled with her broader knowledge of trading best practices across all media formats, ensures that GroupM continues to lead the market with the most valuable and accountable digital solutions for clients of GroupM agencies.

She is figurative in GroupM’s efforts to improve the integrity of the digital marketplace in the U.S. by championing viewability, anti-fraud safeguards, measurement, and standards.

Schiekofer has been a leader in the digital media space at WPP and GroupM since 1994. She founded the digital media offering at Ogilvy & Mather, which was later rebranded to Neo@Ogilvy, and worked on accounts including IBM, TD Ameritrade and Lenovo, among many others. In 2010, Schiekofer joined MEC to head up the AT&T digital business, and soon became responsible for all of digital at MEC. In July of 2014, she moved to GroupM to lead digital investment for Maxus and MediaCom, and to assume responsibility for all of online video.

Rob acts as senior vice president, national media lead, overseeing the Razorfish media capability. Rob is an accomplished internet marketing and media professional with proven expertise in creating and managing interactive campaigns for Fortune 500 and start-up companies. He is a 10-year veteran at Razorfish, having led some of its largest media, digital media and marketing relationships including Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Bayer, Citi, HSN and others.

Before joining Razorfish, Rob managed online marketing channels, including all paid media and affiliate partners for Insurance.com, the nation’s leading online auto insurance agency. Prior to that, Rob defined the ongoing strategic direction of B-to-C and B-to-B websites as an account director for Agency.com, served as senior marketing strategist at Xcelerate and acted as an e-Business Consultant with IBM Global Services. Rob started his career at Office Max where he helped launch OfficeMax’s e-Commerce capability and was the day-to-day lead for key digital media partners. Rob holds an MBA from The Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and a BS/BA from the University of Florida.

Clyde Smith is Senior Vice President, Advanced Technology for FOX Network Engineering and Operations. In this role he supports Broadcast and Cable Networks operating groups in addressing their challenges with new technologies, focusing on standards, regulations.

Prior to joining FOX, he was SVP of global broadcast technology and standards for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

He previously held positions as SVP of Broadcast Engineering Research and Development at Turner and SVP & CTO at Speer Communications.

Following the Challenger Accident he joined a team implementing the presidential investigation board recommendations at the Kennedy Space Center. During his 8 years at the Kennedy Space Center, he supported 48 shuttle missions, three interplanetary probes and numerous Department of Defense initiatives.

Smith supported initiatives that were recognized by The Computer World Honors program with the 2005, 21st Century Achievement Award for Media Arts and Entertainment, as well as an Emmy Award for Pioneering Efforts in the Development of Automated, Server-Based Closed Captioning Systems.

He is a SMPTE Fellow and recipient of the SMPTE Progress Medal, the SMPTE David Sarnoff Medal Award, The SMPTE outstanding service award, The Broadcasting and Cable Technology Leadership award and the Storage Visions Storage Industry Service Award. He is an Honorary Member of the International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers (IABM).

Sarah Warner is Digital Investment Lead, Programmatic and Video at GroupM. In this role, she manages partnerships and investment Strategy for GroupM across programmatic and video. Utilizing the power and sophistication of GroupM’s position in the marketplace, Sarah has negotiated key partnerships with publishers, networks and platforms with complex parameters such as viewability and performance guarantees and Nielsen OCR. Sarah is a trusted partner to GroupM agencies, clients, and vendors thanks to her fair, but direct, approach to deals, her commitment to finding terms that are wins for everyone involved, and her expertise in the digital landscape spanning formats and platforms.

Sarah started her career at 2010, working at The Media Innovation Group (now Xaxis). Prior to her role at GroupM, Sarah was the Vice President of Investments and Partnerships at Xaxis. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Julian Zilberbrand is the Executive Vice President of Advanced Media for ViacomCBS. Zilberbrand is responsible for providing strategic direction and leadership for ViacomCBS’s InView reporting platform and for working across the organization to further develop capabilities in Customer Identity Management amongst other responsibilities in addressable media and data focused business development.