Winners 2021

Adrian Tsung-han Wu works as the Product Manager at Dcard. He is a business leader with a keen interest in advertisement and monetization strategy. He leads the new monetization product line of the Dcard Ad Platform, an automated, user-friendly, precisely targeted, and high-performance ad delivery system.

Dcard is the largest anonymous campus social network and forum in Taiwan. It allows its users to share ideas without fear, regardless of background, age, or interest.

Such is the popularity of this Taiwanese social networking site that is has gained 30 million users since it began operations in 2015.

Shasta Mir handles programmatic and ad ops at Sky Media.

In a career spanning over 25 years, Shasta has been in the digital ads ecosystem for over 17 years. She has worked with several well-known media businesses such as News UK, 90mn, and A&N media.

Shasta's extensive work in digital media makes her a leader with established credentials like a few others.

Paul Nikkel is the founder of Pepper.com, the world’s largest Shopping community. It offers its users the best shopping deals.

With a presence across 12 countries, Pepper.com receives around 500 million page views every month.

After completing his Ph.D. from The University of Sheffield, Paul has launched several ventures. Apart from Pepper, he has founded Quidco and HotUKDeals. He is a partner at 6 Minutes Media and Tipping Canoe.

Chris is the General Manager for WRAL Digital Solutions and Capitol B Creative Studios. A proven leader with over a decade of experience scaling sales and marketing teams, he is responsible for overseeing Capitol Broadcasting Company's digital sales and agency strategies.

Chris is also passionate about helping the local media industry develop sustainable and thriving business models for the future and serves on the Local Media Association's Board of Directors. He has spoken at industry conferences on topics ranging from leadership and organizational realignment, to sales structures and digital marketing.

Sebastiaan Kaland is the owner and founder of Prospektangebote.de, which publishes brochures of large and small business chains in Germany. It covers supermarkets, hardware, electronics, fashion, toys, computers, and drug stores. It also includes local mom-n-pop store brochures. Users can bookmark their favorite store by clicking on the heart to get regular and timely updates on new products and offers. Prospetangebote is also available on android and iOS apps.

Sebastiaan also owns two other websites that provide similar promotional content - Folderz.nl ad Kingbee.nl. France, Germany, and the Netherlands are his primary target markets.

Amanda Hesser is the co-founder and CEO of Food52, a leading innovator in the food, cooking, and home space named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2020. Today, Food52 has a monthly reach of more than 24 million people.

Until 2008, Amanda was a reporter, feature writer, and food editor at The New York Times. She is the author of the award-winning books Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover’s Courtship, with Recipes and The Cook and the Gardener, and she edited Eat, Memory. Her The Essential New York Times Cookbook was a New York Times Best Seller. Amanda has been named one of the 50 most influential women in food by Gourmet. She's also served on President Obama's Commission on White House Fellowships. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and twins.

Jeremy Burge is Chief Emoji Officer at Emojipedia, a company he founded in 2013. World Emoji Day, celebrated around the world on July 17th each year, is his brainchild.

Emojipedia is a site dedicated to emojis. It now serves 40 million page views each month. It claims to be the world's number one emoji resource, serving 300 million emoji definitions every year. In 2019, Emojipedia served its billionth-page view and made quite some news. Its search engine provides a fast emoji search experience with options to browse every emoji by name, category, or platform.

Efrain Ortiz Salgado is associated with a Finnish site, feissarimokat.com.

Feissarimokat is Finland's most popular entertainment site. It receives 150,000 to 300,000 unique visitors each week. Its success has been much talked about and also found mention in MTV3, The Voice, and Stara.

Efrain is also the Managing Director of business Ostokone SL for the past seven years.

Yigal Ben Efraim is the founder and CEO of STANDS4. It owns the sites abbreviations.com and definitions.net, which have 2 million and 6 million monthly active users, respectively.

STANDS4 is a leading provider of free online reference resources, serving millions of unique visitors worldwide with genuine content through its network of reference websites and content partners.

Efrain is also the Managing Director of business Ostokone SL for the past seven years.Yigal founder STANDS4 in 2001. By 2005 it attracted a lot of good attention and won several awards. The most notable ones are Writers Digest's Best websites for 2005 and the American Library Association Best Free Reference Web Sites 2010.

Tal Hen founded gogy.com, a popular free gaming site, in 2013. It offers a wide range of options including action, racing, and io games.

EGames on Gogy have minimal data needs and can be played safely by people of all ages. Its immense popularity reflects in the millions of users it gets every month.

Apart from free online games, Gogy also works on a revenue share model with developers for the distribution of their games.

Florent Maitre is the President and Co-founder of Clubic SAS, publisher of the Clubic.com and Jeuxvideo.fr websites. Clubic is an online media offering news on new technologies, tests, and reviews. It also hosts 10,000 downloadable software and applications. JVFR is a 100% independent online media covering all the news of video games on consoles, PC, and mobile.

According to Alexa analytics, Clubic was the 125th most visited French site in April 2020. It has 8 million monthly active users.

Scott Booker is an experienced tech executive and Former President at Expedia Group and CEO of Healthgrades.com. He is currently the Chief Marketing and Product Officer at Copart.com

Copart, a global online auto auction company, is a top-performing S&P 500 company. It connects more than 750,000 buyers and sellers from over 200 locations around the world. Copart’s diverse inventory features more than 175,000 vehicles available online every day, including early and late-model cars, classics, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, boats, jet-skis, snowmobiles, and RVs.

Its portfolio includes popular sites such as CashForCars.com, CrashedToys, and National Powersport Auctions (NPA). Copart.com, Copart.ca, Copart.co.uk, Copart.ie, Copart.com.br, Copart.de, Copartmea.com, Copart.es, and Copart.fi

Adam Lynch is the Senior Manager Operations and Revenue at Formula One. He takes care of Formula One's Advertising-Technology solutions and is responsible for monetization of F1's owned and operated platforms. In his career of 13 years, he has worked with several well-recognized organizations. He has managed ad ops at Sky, Virgin Media, and Phorm before joining Formula One.

Handling ad ops at the world's richest sport isn't everyone's cup of tea. Adam's been managing it for the last three years and doing extremely well.

Aaron Peckham built Urban Dictionary in 1999, while he was a freshman computer science major at California Polytechnic State University. It is an extremely popular website that, perhaps, requires no introduction

Urban Dictionary is a crowdsourced dictionary of slang and pop culture, where millions of users contribute. It provides explanations of the latest memes, hyper-local language, and internet's trending inside jokes.

Over the last decade, Urban Dictionary has built a global audience of 90 million monthly unique visitors. It adds more than 4000 brand new definitions every single day.

Lino Teuteberg is Co-Founder, Design & Product of Smallpdf.

Smallpdf is an award-winning company that offers document management tools. Founded in 2013, it emerged as a challenger product to the popular PDF software of the time. Smallpdf made for a simple, secure, and reliable alternative.

With 500 million users and 100,000 companies, it worked and how. Today with 30+ million monthly users, it is the most-visited website in Switzerland and one of the top 300 websites worldwide. While SmallPDF continues to grow, the Smallpdf founders' second product, Taxfix, is five years old and also making waves.

Lino Teuteberg is Co-Founder, Design & Product of Smallpdf.

Smallpdf is an award-winning company that offers document management tools. Founded in 2013, it emerged as a challenger product to the popular PDF software of the time. Smallpdf made for a simple, secure, and reliable alternative.

With 500 million users and 100,000 companies, it worked and how. Today with 30+ million monthly users, it is the most-visited website in Switzerland and one of the top 300 websites worldwide. While SmallPDF continues to grow, the Smallpdf founders' second product, Taxfix, is five years old and also making waves.

Chloe Ting is a Bruneian-born Australian YouTuber and fitness personality. As of October 2021, Ting's YouTube channel has 22 million subscribers.

She began her YouTube channel in 2011 with content that discussed fashion and travel. By 2017, her channel became entirely focused on fitness. 2019 was proved pivotal for Chloe - her video ""Get Abs in Two Weeks"" went viral. During summer 2020, Ting's ""Two Week Shred Challenge"" rose to popularity on TikTok.

In December 2020, Chloe Ting was one of Youtube's Top Creators.

Aleksandar Petković is the Growth Director at MONDO.

Mondo is a news and entertainment services website. Launched in 2004, it is one of the more popular Serbian portals with an average of about 200,000 unique visitors per day. Mondo produces content under five main verticals - information, technology, sports, entertainment, and magazine.

In his free time, Aleksandar teaches at the Faculty of Media and Communications. He is also a Master Trainer at the Digital Marketing Qualification program (DIMAQ).

Lai Jingping, a former US diplomat, set up the Wuxia World website in 2014. It features complete translations of Chinese fantasy novels.

Wuxia, meaning martial heroes, refers to fictional stories about ordinary humans who achieve supernatural fighting abilities through Chinese martial arts training and internal energy cultivation.

Lai is better known as RWX on Wuxia World. It is the abbreviation of Ren Wo Xing, the name of his favorite character in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer written by Jin Yong, a renowned master of Wuxia fiction.

The seven-year-old website soon grew into a community of loyal fans. Wuxia World now has 16 million visitors a month.

Maxime Linard is the Director of Ad Sales at MB Diffusion, which owns Agriaffaires, MachineryZone, and Truckscorner. He has 12 years of experience in digital advertising.

Agriaffaires is a classified ads platform for new and used farm equipment. It specializes in equipment for farm, forestry, wine growing, and green area maintenance.

With a presence in more than 20 countries, it has 200,000 classified ads for farm equipment currently online. And Maxime is working on taking it to the next level!

Luis Hernández Garrido is the Founder of Uptodown.com, an alternative to Google Play, to download Android apps. It is a trusted source of apps outside the Google ecosystem.

Uptodown provides free, open access to apps for any device, from anywhere, ensuring a more open mobile industry. It has over 100 million monthly users from all over the world.

Founded in 2002 by José Domínguez and Luis Hernández, Uptodown.com is a profitable bootstrapped company without investors.

Alexandra Avădanei is the Head of Digital Revenue & E-Commerce at Wizz Air.

Wizz Air is one of the leading low-cost airlines in Europe and the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. Founded in 2004, Wizz Air carried more than 34 million passengers in pre-pandemic times. It flies to 44 countries and counts on more than 4,500 enthusiastic aviation professionals. With airspaces opening up, it continues to grow, adding new countries, destinations, and opportunities to travel.

Alexandra has been with the airlines for 13 years. She started as a Cabin Attendant and worked her way into her area of interest.

Ramesh Jha is the founder of Random Experiments Web Solutions LLP. Since the last seven years, Random Experiments has launched several websites.

ScrabbleWordFinder.org is one of his most successful sites. It was set up in 2013 and today gets 15 million users a month. It helps users to learn new words, improve their English vocabulary, and as a reference for word games.

Ramesh's other work includes wordunscrambler.me, wordsolver.co, syllablecounter.net, and portchecker.co. He enjoys writing too - usually related to free and open source software, programming, and business.

Rafael Lopez is the Operations Director at Grupo Merca2 that owns several popular Spanish media sites such as Merca2, Moncloa, Que, and Cotilleo.

Merca2.es is a popular business and economic newspaper targeting Spanish companies. It has 5,308,000 unique monthly readers. Cotilleo.es is an entertainment portal started in 2016. It attracts around 12 million users a month.

Rafael joined Merca in 2019 and has been part of several developments, the most significant being the acquisition of Que.es - a news site that targets the youth.

Thomas Lintz is the Managing Director at Transfermarkt. He has been with the organization for around 14 years. He started as the Area Manager for Austria in 2007 and gradually worked his way up.

Founded in 2001, Transfermarkt is the leading digital football platform for facts, statistics, and football information. It offers the largest football database about players, clubs, and competitions.

Transfermarkt also boasts of one of the largest football communities. The much-quoted player market values and the ""Rumour Mill"" for possible transfers are its core offerings.

Michael Tanret is the founder of VoetbalNieuws.be, FootNews.be, and soccernews.nl.

A football fan himself, Michael has been running the soccer news sites for over ten years now. These sites have a combined reach of 10 million users a month. Soccernews.nl alone attracts half of it - around 5 million visitors.

After getting his Bachelor of Media and Communication. from the University of Amsterdam, Michael has built a publishing house of his own and how. Moreover, his niche focus on soccer has helped him earn a loyal fan following.

Roman Romanuk is the CEO at Prezna and owner of hillreporter.com and many other web properties with 10-15 million unique visitors per month. He is a serial entrepreneur whose company Vibey LLC acquired WorldLifestyle.com in May 2020.

Worldlifestyle.com began seven years ago, targeting a broad user base. It ranked among the Alexa Top 100 websites. Vibey.com LLC aims to reposition it as a top lifestyle, health, food, beauty, and online wellness resource center.

Roman believes entrepreneurship is in the DNA, and it flows through the businesses one builds. True to his belief, Worldlifestyle.com and Vibey are great examples of it.

Ed Arrandale is the Head of Programmatic at WeatherBug.

WeatherBug is a leading weather site and mobile app with over 20 million users. It is a top-rated weather app in the app stores. In 2019, WeatherBug was named the best weather app by MediaPost’s Appy Awards. It is owned and operated by GroundTruth, the leading global location technology platform.

Michal Avny is the Co-Founder of Symbolab.

Symbolab is an advanced math education tool. It allows users to learn, practice, and discover math topics using mathematical symbols, scientific notations, and text. Symbolab provides tools for a wide range of topics - from middle school to college. It offers several smart calculators for equations, simultaneous equations, inequalities, integrals, derivatives, limits, and more.

It ranks number one in the science and math category and attracts 30 million users a month.CourseHero acquired Symbolab in November 2020.

Steve Evans is Head of Ad Operations at Reach PLC for the past three years

Reach PLC is UK's largest news publisher. Reach's titles are trusted sources for news, entertainment, and sport. Of the 100+ brands, The Mirror, The Express, The Star, Daily Record, The People, OK!, New, Birmingham Mail, Manchester Evening News, the ‘Live’ digital network and InYourArea are some of the more popular ones.

Steve works closely with ad tech, ad product, yield & finance teams to grow revenues and develop new technologies. Before joining Reach, he worked with Trinity Mirror in various digital marketing roles for 17 years.

Tomasz Musial is the Head of WPartner development at Grupa Wirtualna Polska.

WPartner is an SSP (Supply Side Platform) that monetizes inventory with multiple demand partners integrated via s2s and a unique and incremental demand delivered by WP Sales Booster DSP. Tomasz is an active member of IAB and speaks at numerous local and international ad-tech and programmatic conferences. He is also an author of many publications about Internet advertising.

In his free time, he plays squash, surfs kites, and snowboards.

Ashish Kumar works as the Senior Manager - Ad Operations & Programmatic at India Today Group. He manages and maintains the entire inventory of India Today Group websites across all platforms.

India Today is the country's most diversified media group with its presence and dominance across media formats - Print, Television, Radio, Web and Mobile portals, Social Media, and Book publishing. It has a combined reach of 150 million-plus.

Starting as a programmer, Ashish moved to ad operations and has worked with leading media companies such as Afaqs and Dainik Bhaskar.

Job Richard is the Head of Programmatic at Okezone.com

Okezone.com is an Indonesian online news and entertainment portal that targets native speakers. As an online portal, it covers a broad range of topics - general news, politics, events, international, economy, lifestyle, celebrities, sports, soccer, auto, technology, travel, and food. It ranks in the top 100 sites in Indonesia and attracts around 16 million users per month.

Job started as a developer with Okezone and then moved into programmatic, eventually heading it.

Jason McConnell is the Director of Product, Innovation, and Monetization at SportsEngine.

SportsEngine, part of NBC Sports Next, is the preferred sports management software of millions of clubs, associations, leagues, governing bodies, and tournaments. It helps them run their websites, player registration, background checks, and mobile applications. Most sports leagues use SportsEngine.

Jason has been instrumental in enhancing the user experience by offering additional offers based on individual user journeys. In the process, he is transforming the traditional advertising and app store model.

Mike Feerick is the CEO and the founder of Alison. After completing his MBA from Harvard, he worked with several messaging and media platforms. In 2006, he started Alison.

Alison is a leading global platform for workplace learning and hiring. It provides online courses, publishing, and recruitment services. With 3,000+ free courses on offer, it has 20 million registered users.

Widely recognized as the first MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses), Alison has received multiple international awards for innovation in education.

Robert Beeler founded Beeler.tech in 2016 to rethink how consulting, training and events can better serve individuals and companies in the digital media space.

Beeler.tech is the platform to facilitate peer-to-peer connections and develop content and events based on topics not served well through traditional channels. Its content helps people grow their careers, improve their departments and bring success to their companies.

It is an extension of Rob's mission of connecting people, creating conversations, and helping bring efficiency to digital media and ad tech.

Rick (Richard) Welch is the Vice President and Head of Programmatic Advertising at Flipboard.

Flipboard is a platform for the discovery and sharing of stories. It carries curated content in the form of quality articles, videos, and podcasts. It also allows its users to share the best ideas with others through their own Flipboard Magazines.

Rick has been with Flipboard for the past five years. He is an ad tech expert, revenue leader, and startup advisor-all rolled into one. He has close to two decades of experience in business development, sales team leadership & technical operations.

Brooke Edwards-Plant is the Senior Director of Ad Operations at Condé Nast.

Condé Nast is a global media company home to iconic brands including Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, AD, Vanity Fair, and Wired. It has a combined reach of 88 million consumers in print, 419 million in digital, and 432 million across social platforms. Its video content gets more than 1 billion views.

Brooke joined Condé Nast recently. With close to two decades of experience in ad operations and media, she is poised to take ad ops to the next level.

Travis Bernard leads the membership business at TechCrunch, called TechCrunch+. It provides analysis and insights for startups to get better at their game.

Travis works with a cross-functional team of editors, marketers, product engineers, designers, data scientists, and customer support representatives to make TechCrunch+ the next big thing.

Previously he led Audience Development at TechCrunch. Under his leadership, monthly active users grew by 40% in four years. Activating and engaging social media audiences, improving the newsletter products, improving the top of the funnel through video creation and distribution made it possible.

Janelle Faulk works as the Global Head of Advertising Operations at Bloomberg LP

Starting as Senior Analyst, Web and Mobile Pricing & Inventory at Bloomberg in 2009, she has worked her way up to head ad operations. Her focus on revenue growth, digital transformation, and meticulous execution has been instrumental in making it possible.

Janelle is a leader who thrives in a fast-paced and dynamic environment. She has successfully worked with and led global, cross-functional teams. Her growth at Bloomberg is a testimony to her skills and ability to lead.

Sophie Toth is Programmatic & Ad Tech Lead at Euronews Global. She is also the co-founder of The Women in Programmatic Network.

Euronews is an international news media, providing European perspective to a worldwide audience through 12 cross-platform editions. Sophie handles programmatic and ad technology strategy. She believes in constantly evaluating the effectiveness of the programmatic ad stack. It helps her ensure that it meets the needs of the business in terms of sellthrough, ad yield, and cost.

Sophie's efforts at Euronews for the past five years have helped her gain an in-depth knowledge of the programmatic ecosystem. Keeping up to date with new ad tech functionality and recognizing potential opportunities come naturally to her.

SoWill Doherty serves as the Chief of Marketplace Development at Index Exchange.

Index Exchange is a global advertising marketplace where premium digital media companies transact their ad impressions with accountability and in real-time.

Will has been instrumental in driving growth at Index Exchange for the past eight years. He joined as Senior Director of Business Develop in 2014 and worked his way up to the current role - a testimony to his contribution.

Angelina (Kwok) Eng is the Vice President, Measurement & Attribution at IAB. She is a seasoned executive with 25+ years of digital media, marketing, and operations experience.

To date, Angelina has supported 100+ marketers to define, build and manage digital media and marketing efforts. Also, she has been instrumental in defining deliverable standards, designing ad trafficking and tracking guidelines, and establishing best practices.

Before joining IAB in early 2020, Angelina worked with leading organizations such as Morgan Stanley, Merkle, Dentsu Aegis.

Scott Messer is the Senior Vice President, Media at Leaf Group. He oversees revenue operations across the media division and manages a portfolio of 40+ owned and operated vertical-focused websites.

Scott began with Leaf as a senior manager focusing on third-party monetization, revenue operations, vendor management, contract negotiations, and advertising technologies. Over the years, he has facilitated hundreds of projects, deals, and partnerships across various platforms and properties. In 2016, he became VP & GM, Media.

With over a decade of experience, Scott has consulted for several companies in branded advertising, content development, corporate naming rights, talent relations, research, and fundraising.

Doug Farrell is the Group Head of Digital Advertising Strategy DMG Media Ireland. He also serves as the Board Member and Director of IAB Ireland.

DMG owns several websites, including MailOnline.co.uk, EVOKE.ie, Extra.ie, Rollercoaster.ie, and OneFabDay.com.

DMG owns several websites, including MailOnline.co.uk, EVOKE.ie, Extra.ie, Rollercoaster.ie, and OneFabDay.com.

Ian Hocking works as the Vice President, Digital at South China Morning Post. He is a sales and marketing professional with nearly two decades of experience across various geographies. Starting as the Director of Digital in 2018, he was made the VP in less than a year at SCMP.

Founded in 1903, SCMP is one of the leading publishers in the region. It also publishes premium lifestyle titles such as Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire.

Ian has helped drive a significant shift in the way SCMP operates. He has introduced and built tools that have positioned SCMP as the leading digital publisher in SEA.

Joshua Campanella is the Programmatic Lead at South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post is a leading news media company that has reported on China and Asia. SCMP also publishes news 24/7 on SCMP.com. Additionally, it publishes a portfolio of premium lifestyle and fashion titles in Hong Kong including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Esquire, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Joshua is an accomplished and results-driven executive with over a decade of experience in digital marketing strategies. He has a proven track record of performance increasing revenue. He is known for his ability to see the big-picture and an instinctive sense for ‘what works?’ in marketing.

Kathy Murray, Director of Ad Operations at Investor's Business Daily, is an ad industry veteran. She's been with the organization for 30 years after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Investor’s Business Daily helps users make trading decisions that minimize risk and maximize profit. It provides proprietary stock screens, comparative performance ratings, and unique commentary helping investors zero in on top-performing growth stocks. As one of the leading business dailies, investors.com attracts 11 mn users every month and ranks among the top 100 in its category.

Kathy's been instrumental in helping the organization transform from print-only to the digital ads ecosystem. Notably, she heads ad ops for both. She also manages the ad operations tech stack and DMP. With a deep understanding of the business and ad ops, she works with product and engineering teams to develop new ad products.

Shikhar Goel is the CTO at GeeksforGeeks.org, which has carved a space for itself in the programming education business.

From what started as a blog, GeeksforGeeks has turned into a formidable ed-tech player. It has content that covers articles on various computer science subjects, programming problems for practice. It also provides the entire range of basic to premium courses - from teaching technologies to preparing students for entrance examinations.

Since 2009, it has gained more than one million users from across the world. It has also built a community of more than 20,000 contributors and 500 campus ambassa

John Larder works as the Head of Audience Data and Analytics, Future Media at BBC. He is a professional with over 15 years of experience.

Before joining BBC, he worked with reputed organizations such as Barclays and Telegraph Media. He is known for his ability to bring the disparate, and often incomplete, strands of analytics to life with commercially actionable insights.

At BBC, he is responsible for understanding the audience of BBC Digital - one of the largest publishers in the world.

Justina Palinaviciute is the Head of Ad Ops and Monetisation at BoredPanda. She is the driving force behind monetizing traffic from 100 million users a month.

Bored Panda is global leading art, design, and photography community for creative people. Its submission platform helps artists and creators turn their stories into viral content.

Justina, over the years, has also evolved to be a valued adviser on all things marketing, product, and customer support. That said, as a true leader, she believes there's no end to learning.

Courtney Conte serves as the Chief Operating Officer at BBC Worldwide Productions. He is one of the industry’s most sought-after programming executives.

Courtney has developed and produced television series for almost every network out there - Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, UPN, The WB, BBC, HBO, Showtime, Nickelodeon, and Lifetime. He has been honored with Cable Ace Award, Golden Globe, and several Emmy nominations.

For the last 10 years, Courtney has been handling business strategy for BBC Worldwide Productions.

Macaulay Lowe heads programmatic at LADBible group. Primary targeting youth, LADBible has a readership of 10 bn more content views than Vice and MailOnline - owned by the Daily Mail's publisher - combined

Starting his journey with LADBible as a Programmatic Executive back in 2016, Macaulay has been a part of a remarkable growth journey. In the past five years, the company has more than doubled its readership. Given the wide following that it already enjoyed, a 100 percent growth is no mean feat. The revenue also has grown at 35 percent annually for four years in a row. Picture that!

Heading programmatic at such a scale isn't everybody's cup of tea. And Macaulay sure has worked his magic in six years with LADBible.

"Lars Gantenberg joined Transfermarkt as CMO in 2018. In February 2019, he was promoted to the role of Managing Director. He realigned strategy and led the global expansion of Transfermarkt. Operating in 12 languages, Lars successfully positioned Transfermarkt as a global player.

Founded in 2001, Transfermarkt is the leading digital football platform for facts, statistics, and football information. It offers the largest football database about players, clubs, and competitions. Transfermarkt also boasts of one of the largest football communities. The much-quoted player market values and the ""Rumour Mill"" for possible transfers are its core offerings.

To his credit, Lars doubled the traffic to 120 million visits. Transfermarkt today has more than 60 million football fans worldwide engaged."

Tijmen Ruizendaal is the CTO and Co-founder of Chordify.

Chordify is a music e-learning platform that automatically transforms music into chords. It transforms the music from YouTube, SoundCloud, or any other source, into chords. It recognizes chords from the audio signal and aligns them to the music in a player. Notably, the technology also helps musicians to play the music of their choice

Love for music binds the core founding team of Chordify together and is also its secret recipe for success.

Aidan serves as Commercial Director at Journal Media. He has been with the group for the last nine years.

Journal Media Ltd is an online media and publishing company focused on the Irish market. Its portfolio comprises some well-known Irish online publications such as TheJournal.ie (Irish News/Current Affairs), The42.ie (Sports), Fora.ie (Business, Startups, and SMEs), Boards.ie (Discussion Forum) & Noteworthy (crowd-funded investigative journalism).

With a Master's in marketing practice from UCD's Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, Aidan worked with agencies before his stint with Journal Media. His progress through the years - from Business Development Manager to the Commercial Director - is a testimony to his understanding of the online publishing business.

Justin Ward is Director of Ad Operations at Eezy.

Eezy is a rapidly growing technology company that connects designers to businesses that need their products - such as vector images, videos, or themes. It owns popular websites such as Vecteezy, Videezy, Brusheezy, and Themezy. Armed with a Master's Degree in Accounting and Computer Science from Illinois State University, Justin started his career in accounting in 2003. It was 2006 when his affair with Ad operations began at Feedburner. He's worked in ad ops with some well-known companies, including the likes of Google, Digg, Buzzlogic, and others.

Among his peers, Justin is known for his unparalleled knowledge of online advertising and its complexities.

Seth Rosenberg, Chief Operating Officer at Shiftkey, is known for his contributions to multiple successful exits, including an IPO. For the uninitiated, Shiftkey is a leading technology staffing platform serving the healthcare industry.

As a SaaS business leader, his focus has always been driving a healthy top line and bottom line. Process improvement, new product development, and data-based marketing are his forte. Seth has a proven track record of leading businesses from $29M to $100M in revenue. Over the last 25 years, he's built solid expertise in private equity and taking companies public.

With Lorient Capital Management investing in Shiftkey this August, it is gearing up for the next phase. And Seth has his hands full!

Lokesh Gupta is an expert Java programmer with more than a decade of work experience. His blog howtodoinjava.com is a rich data source for all things related to Java and more.

HowToDoInJava attracts more than a million visitors every month. Notably, it is a hobby project and not a full-time job for Lokesh. He works as a Lead Analyst with one of the biggest banks in the USA. It speaks volumes about the content quality and its value for the readers.

Lokesh's other hobbies include playing table tennis, badminton, and carrom. He is also a movie buff and a fan of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Tom Hanks.

Ehud Zamis is an Israel-based entrepreneur who founded Greetings Island in 2009. Greetings Island is known for its invitations and greeting cards. It has over 5 million monthly active users, with millions of registered members. Through Greetings Island, users can download and print cards or send online eCards.

Ehud is the epitome of entrepreneurial passion. After earning his BA in Economics and Business Management in 2009, he has set up four online businesses. He's also the founder of Ehud Zamir Entrepreneurship and Development that mentors upcoming entrepreneurs.

Jon Deane is a Stanford grad who has dedicated his career to education and learning. Having worked with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Jon is now heading GreatSchools.org as its CEO.

GreatSchools is the leading national nonprofit empowering parents with essential information to improve educational opportunities for their children. It is the only national organization that collects & analyzes data from all 51 state education departments and the federal government. It provides analysis, insights, and school quality ratings for parents, partners, researchers, and policymakers.

Over 46 million users visit GreatSchools' award-winning website annually to learn about schools in their area and access thousands of free, evidence-based parenting resources.

Fredrik Lindahl is the CEO and Co-Owner of Flightradar24.

Flightradar24 tracks positions of aircraft in real-time and turn that data into engaging consumer and business applications. Each day it gets 2 million users. Its app has been the top-selling app in Apple’s App Store in over 100 countries. Most airlines, airports, and many other companies in the aviation industry (including Airbus, Boeing, and Embraer) use its services.

Notably, Fredrik started Flightradar as a hobby project in 2012.

Mats Lidgren is the Yield Manager at Flightradar24. It tracks the positions of aircraft in real-time and turns that data into engaging consumer and business applications.

A seasoned programmatic professional, Mats has been instrumental in maximizing digital ad revenue for Flightradar24. He leads from the front while identifying monetization opportunities and analyzing programmatic revenue trends. As a hands-on leader, he also vets potential programmatic partners himself.

Interestingly, Mats began his career as a Graphic Designer. Working with Metro Sverige for almost 20 years, he quit as the Head of Ad sales and operations. He is an IAB-certified ad operations specialist.

Frank Alperstaedt founded UpdateStar in 2007 and has been at the helm of its affairs since.

UpdateStar is a leading provider of software information and other software services for both personal and corporate users. Its online backup service provides unlimited online storage space for data backups. UpdateStar also offers complete PC software setup services to install popular software.

Frank is known among his peers for building innovative companies and software products for portal monetization. Mobile marketing, software licensing, and e-commerce are his other specialties.

Bernd Peter Zatyko is a seasoned marketer with more than 25 years of experience under his belt. He currently serves as the Director of Sales & New Media at oe24 GmbH.

oe24 is the online version of Österreich, a German-language Austrian newspaper, first published in Vienna by Helmut and Wolfgang Fellner on 1 September 2006. It attracts 15 million visitors and ranks among the top 30 Austrian websites.

Bernd has been with the group that owns a bouquet of 14 sites for the past 11 years. He has been spearheading the group sales for online, mobile, and cross-media advertising solutions.

Dan Sivan is the Founder, Developer & Producer at Ayayu VR Games, which develops novel VR gameplay. Its technology brings merchandised action figures to life. If that sounds like fantasy-world speak to you, Dan's other ventures will awe you even more.

Before starting as a game developer, Dan was a full-time singer, songwriter, musician, and music producer. He released 2 albums, Matzof (2010), and Analogi (2013).

For the past six years, he's been focusing on game development and made great progress.

Sandeep Kanoi is the designated partner at Taxguru Consultancy & Online Publication LLP. It owns the website TaxGuru.in, which provides free updates to chartered accountants, company secretaries, tax professionals, cost accountants, and others on amendments in various tax laws and regulations.

Even as TaxGuru caters to a niche audience within India, it attracts 10 million users a month. It has been consistently in the top 20 accounting and auditing sites.

TaxGuru's success proves that providing value through quality content to users works better than any strategy out there.

Bouzid Mehdi Mounis is the co-founder and CEO of popular website Ouedniss.com.

Ouedkniss.com is an Algerian online classifieds site founded in 2006. It lets users publish classified ads for free and coordinate the delivery directly with the buyer or seller. The breadth of categories it serves is astounding.

With easy access, Ouedkniss.com has evolved to be one of the most preferred online stores in Algeria. It claims to attract more than 800,000 views per day.And yes, Bouzid's other venture autobip.com enjoys a loyal following in the Algerian auto enthusiast community.

Jason Lydiate is the Commercial Director at TimeandDate.com Launched in 1998, timeanddate.com is today a leading website on time-related information worldwide.

timeanddate.com provides free and accurate information on current time (the World Clock) along with time zones. It also offers tools like the time-difference calculator, meeting planner across time zones, timers, countdowns, calendars, holidays, sunrise & sunset, moon times and phases, calling codes, and much more.

It also has Norwegian and German versions - http:/www.timeanddate.no & http://www.timeanddate.de.

Mathis Büchi is the Co-founder and CEO of SmallPDF. He is a serial entrepreneur who started right after college. Speak of clarity of vision!

Smallpdf is an award-winning company that offers document management tools. Founded in 2013, Smallpdf emerged as a challenger product to the popular PDF software of the time. It made for a simple, secure, and reliable alternative. With 500 million users and 100,000 companies, it worked and how.

Today with 30+ million monthly users, it is the most-visited website in Switzerland and one of the top 300 websites worldwide. While SmallPDF continues to grow, Mathis' second product, Taxfix, is five years old and making waves.

Matthew Pferschy is a digital media professional with two decades of experience in online publishing, ad operations, product development, and web analytics. He currently serves as the Director, Ad Operations at American City Business Journals. American City Business Journals is a media company that covers local business communities. As a multi-channel media company, it is available in both print and digital formats.

Founded in 1985, ACBJ has emerged as a premier media platform that serves business decision-makers. Matthew has been with the organization for the past seven years. After graduating cum laude with BFA in 1997, Matthew has had a distinguished career too. He has built and led high-performance teams to create innovative digital products that delivered tangible results for publishers and marketers alike.

Joel Gaspard is the original developer and director of ToyTheater.com.Toy Theater is a collection of early learning toys which aims at helping teachers and making learning fun & safe.

Beginning as an artist, Joel entered the educational software field in the 1990s working on educational CD-Roms including the supplement to the TV show School House Rock. Soon, he taught himself computer programming and began Toy Theater in 2001.

Joel's free, online educational resources for students and teachers have found immense popularity. Toy Theater has gone on to become a highly respected site with over a million visitors each year. It provides early learning for children that is free and accessible to all.

David Pescovitz is co-founder/editor of Boing Boing, a tech and culture online magazine with more than 5 million monthly readers. He also serves as the vice president of communications and content at ICONIQ Capital, a privately held investment firm.

David's experience in media, publishing, and marketing, makes him a much sought-after leader on all things content strategy and storytelling. As a strategic consultant, he has worked with Fortune 500 companies like Procter & Gamble, AT&T, and General Motors.

A true content professional, Pescovitz won a Grammy Award in 2018 for co-producing and art directing the Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition, the first vinyl release of the iconic interstellar message for extraterrestrials.

Paola Vargas Lopez is the Director at Sepeprestaciones, an Almerian employment information portal. It covers social benefits, procedures to avail them, training courses, and apply for a job.

Started in 2016m the site has garnered a lot of attention. It gets almost 100,000 users a day. Providing details on unemployment benefits, it attempts to resolve users' queries through simple explanations.

Paola has been with the organization for the last four years, before which she was working with a similar site.

Josh Peters is the Sr. Director of Global Audience Data Strategy and Data Partnerships at BuzzFeed. He manages the global audience data, strategy, and partnerships.

Over the last seven years at BuzzFeed, he's built video product offerings and distribution methodologies, managed the West Coast distribution team, and created BuzzFeed’s pre-roll product.

With over 15 years of digital marketing, media, and data experience, Josh was named one of the top 100 global digital marketers in 2019 by The Drum in their annual Digerati list. He is also a contributing member of the IAB Measurement Group focusing on video and motion ads measurement.

Will Fox works as the Senior Programmatic Manager at The Irish Times. He leads all programmatic activity across the Irish Times Trust, including Irishtimes.com, MyHome.ie, Irishexaminer.com, Breakingnews.ie, Echolive.ie, and other regional titles.

The Irish Times is a leading newspaper that reaches 793,000 readers each week through print and digital media. Over the years, it has actively expanded its reach through email digests, podcasts, and many other formats.

Will is an experienced ad ops professional with more than eight years of experience. He started his career with Digitize and worked with Converge Digital and JOE, before joining The Irish Times in 2020.

Steven Cheah is the Senior Director of Ad Operations at Barstool Sports.

Barstool Sports is a digital sports media brand with 66+ million monthly unique users. It is known for its innovative content presence on multiple platforms including, apps, podcasts, radio, events, and TV. Some of their popular sports podcasts are Pardon My Take and Call Her Daddy.

Steven has been with the Barstool for the past five years. He has extensive experience in campaign management and media planning. With more than a decade in ad ops, Steven has seen the industry evolve from close quarters.

Travis Brown has spent 15 years in the media, entertainment, and tech sectors. As the VP of Branded Partnerships & Ad Tech at WeTransfer, his experience in business development, strategic partnership, and building distribution capacity make him a breed apart.

Working with some well-known organizations, he has had an illustrious career. In the past fours with WeTransfer, he has played a significant role in striking crucial partnerships such as Slack and Mozilla.

His outgoing personality reflects his zest for an active and outdoorsy lifestyle. Riding motorcycles, snowboarding, surfing, you name it - he does it all!

Michel Moulin is a French businessman and a media baron.

Michel Moulin began his career with Havas as a sales representative in 1984. He rose through the ranks and became a member of the management board. In 1999, he founded Paru Vendu, a popular classifieds newspaper in France. At its peak, it reached a circulation of 19 million copies.

An ardent football lover, Michel had to give up his passion due to a knee injury. Passionate about sport, he created 10sport, a newspaper that pivoted to digital that attracts 10 million unique visitors.

Rahul Suthar is a journalist associated with the popular entertainment portal TellyExpress.

TellyExpress publishes news, features, and reviews on Bollywood, television, web, and regional entertainment content. It has been in business for around 11 years and attracts more than 3 million users a month.

Apart from TellyExpress, Rahul also contributes to JustShowbiz, another popular entertainment site.

Michael Racic is the Global Head of Programmatic and Data at Fandom.

Fandom is the world’s largest fan platform providing fans experience of virtual worlds spanning entertainment and gaming. It gets a staggering 315 million unique visitors per month! That's not all - its content arm, Fandom productions, has produced content that got nominated for Emmy Awards.

With such scale, you need a programmatic head who has his head firmly on his shoulders. And Michael is precisely that. Having held leadership positions at Rocket Fuel, UM, McCann, Optimedia, and FCB, he brings to Fandom the experience of handling and building scale. With 22 years in advertising and media, he is the man cut out for the job.Adrian Tsung-han Wu works as the Product Manager at Dcard. He is a business leader with a keen interest in advertisement and monetization strategy. He leads the new monetization product line of the Dcard Ad Platform, an automated, user-friendly, precisely targeted, and high-performance ad delivery system.Dcard is the largest anonymous campus social network and forum in Taiwan. It allows its users to share ideas without fear, regardless of background, age, or interest. Such is the popularity of this Taiwanese social networking site that is has gained 30 million users since it began operations in 2015.

Katherine Miller is the Director of Programmatic Partnerships at Vox Media, LLC. She is a seasoned professional with ten years of digital media experience.

Katherine has worked in every aspect of digital, from strategic media and marketing planning to sales. She is known for her deep knowledge of ad technology, programmatic, content, social, and project management. At Vox, she handles programmatic partnerships at the group level.

Vox's portfolio contains some of the most respected digital properties, including Vox, New York Magazine, The Verge, The Cut, Eater, Vulture, The Strategist, Polygon, SB Nation, Intelligencer, Curbed, Grub Street, and Recode. It also has one of the largest and popular podcast collections about technology, news, pop culture, futurism, and more.

Vincent So is the Global Head of Ad Strategy & Growth at Hypebeast. He is responsible for ad strategy, product development, operations, monetization, and data partnerships. Hypebeast is a publicly listed media company that lives at the forefront of global culture, offering digital media, e-commerce, and creative agency services to cultural enthusiasts worldwide.

Since 2009, Vincent has worked with Ogilvy & Mather, 9GAG, and the WPP Group. He has worked across continents in New York, Singapore, and now Hong Kong. If it is about start-ups, ad tech, monetization, or growth, Vincent is the one you would want to seek.

Daniël van Kolfschoten owns BVK Productions, which runs the sites Timestables.com, Timestables.co.uk, Einmaleins.de, Tafeldiploma.nl, Kinderspelletjes.nl, and Kinderspiele.de.

Timestables.com is based on the seemingly simple context of learning multiplication tables. It gets 500,000 users a month and is one of the best performers on BVK productions stables.

Notably, Daniël started his journey of internet entrepreneurship right after school in 2013. His journey of seven years and the success achieved is indeed commendable.

Gijs Bekenkamp is an entrepreneur with over a decade of business experience. He is also an award-winning and published travel photographer and spent ten years of his life playing in bands as a drummer. He is currently the CMO and Founder of Chordify.

Chordify is a music e-learning platform that automatically transforms music into chords. It transforms music, from YouTube, SoundCloud, or any other source, into chords. It recognizes chords from the audio signal and aligns them to the music in a player. The technology helps musicians to play the music of their choice.

Jeff Douglass is the Director of Product at PhillyVoice.

PhillyVoice.com is a digital media publisher that produces engaging Philadelphia region-specific content. It brings in a fresh approach to publishing of looking beyond headlines. Its sole focus is to tell stories that inform, inspire and ignite conversations.

His experience of two decades of working in the publishing industry lends him a deep knowledge in mobile advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), digital strategy, user experience, and e-commerce.

Lech Mazur is the CEO of Advameg, Inc. for the last 19 years.

Headquartered in Illinois, Advameg has a portfolio of over 50 sites. Cumulatively the network gets 23 million monthly unique visitors a month. The sites cover a diverse range of topics cover topics from science to business, history to health, and much more. Some of its popular sites include Quantcast.com and City-data.com.

Advameg's sites create content that scores high on EAT parameters. Consequently, these are frequently referenced by the media, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, CNBC, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.

Thomas Thorsell-Arntsen, CEO at W3schools Network, is on a mission to make web development learning understandable and available for everyone.

W3schools is the world's largest web developer site and provides free learning of web technologies online. It is known for its simplified and interactive learning experiences. The response has been phenomenal. It attracts around 70 million users a month, and the number keeps growing as W3schools adds more course content to its folds.

Started in 1998, W3schools has evolved with time and continues to be one of the top 25 sites worldwide in its category.

Jason Kat is the director of Kat Technologies Pty Ltd. This Australian firm garnered enormous popularity among students, professors, bloggers, creative writers, and others by producing one of the most popular synonyms and thesaurus websites, WordHippo.

It is an online website and application that provides various tools for the creative and recreational use of words, such as writing, poetry, translations, word games, etc.

Jason Kat, a specialist in data collection, reporting, leadership and publishing across multiple industries such as travel, lifestyle, sport, and education, has given an entirely new definition to creative writing by inventing a remarkable tool such as WordHippo, and that, too, without charging anything! It's difficult to overlook his enormous influence on the entire writing and publishing industry.

Bas de Haas is the CEO and founder of Chordify, as well as an entrepreneur, music researcher, computer scientist, guitarist, and general music fan. Chordify was formed by a group of ex-band members (a.k.a. pals), including Bas de Haas, who intended to put scientific results on chord identification into practice.

The online music education tool is created solely by music fans to assist you in finding chords for any song you choose. The platform analyzes a song's accords and audio signal and synchronizes it with your theme in a simple and creative music player. Visionary leadership, dedication to serving music fans worldwide, extraordinary ability to make tough decisions, and respecting coworkers and employees are only a few qualities of Bas de Haas.

Co-founder of AllEvents.in, one of the largest event discovery platforms in the world. Every month, the platform assists 3 million people in discovering activities in their city. It covers approximately 250 million events taking place in 30,000 cities and towns throughout the world. Ruchit is a results-driven individual. He is an avid learner of new technologies and can solve any technological problem. He is currently working on AllEvents. and developing a marketplace to uniquely link the right audience with the right events.

People who knew Ruchit trusted in his potential since he was a child scientist at 11 and sold his first software product at 15! His unique abilities, such as outstanding vision, integrity, tenacity and determination, and coachability, make him an invaluable asset to any company or industry.

Michele DeVine is the Vice President, Programmatic and Commerce Partnerships at BuzzFeed.

Michele joined BuzzFeed three years ago to lead programmatic sales, focusing primarily on PMPs and Programmatic Guaranteed. Over the last year and a half, she has been handling Commerce Partnerships. She is responsible for the growth of legacy accounts through media and affiliate marketing.

Her rich experience of 13 years in digital media makes Michele the go-to expert in the space.

Orlin Milinov is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of GSMArena, a well-known gadgets information portal.

The website provides information about numerous mobile phone brands. It informs its customers on the most recent and up-to-date mobile phone trends and other relevant information. In addition, the GSMArena blog provides articles about mobile phones and software, gaming applications, operating systems, social networks, web browsers, network operators, and many other topics to its readers.

It goes without saying that Orlin has established one of the most trustworthy sites for consumers who wish to read real reviews of mobile phones and other products before purchasing them. In addition, his contribution to the publishing industry, particularly in making life easier for phone enthusiasts, is invaluable.

Sara Badler joined Dotdash Meredith in February 2018 as CRO of Programmatic Advertising & Partnerships. Dotdash Meredith is America's largest digital and print publisher. From mobile to publications, approximately 200 million people rely on us to make decisions, take action, and be inspired. Dotdash Meredith's 40 notable brands include PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Verywell, and others.

Sara loves the power of data, is a very effective leader, possesses the extraordinary quality to convince her clients and customers and has been responsible for the overall sales and marketing growth of Dotdash Meredith. ​

Apoorv Kalra is the co-founder and director of BollywoodShaadis.com. BollywoodShaadis is India's most popular entertainment and celebrity wedding news website, with over 18 million monthly visits.​

He is in charge of the company's operations, which include product strategy, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, and communications. ​

A fantastic person, a true thinker, insightful, and always willing to assist. According to his employers and coworkers, the finest thing about Apoorv is that he operates without the 'bossy' mentality.​ ​

Sushant Awasthi is the manager of Ad operations at LiveScore. The platform is a leading provider of real-time sports updates and streaming services in the world, providing excellent information and highly engaging goods to sports enthusiasts. Over 56 million people use it on a monthly basis throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Oceania

Sushant believes in staying ahead of the curve while handling ad operations for such a large-scale publisher.

His extensive knowledge and practical experience in web development and client-side and server-side integration have served him well throughout his career. He has previously worked for well-known companies such as Times Internet and Expedia.

Kapil Jindal is the CEO and co-founder of Beebom, one of the top consumer technology websites dedicated to assisting people in better understanding and using technology.

The platform provides the most recent tech news on our website and app, assists our audience in making smarter selections through our extensive reviews, and produces high-quality videos on the most important technology to the end user.

Kapil was confident in his business ideas and goals and was proactive. Leadership, incredible focus and determination, exceptional communication skills, the capacity to make bold yet result-oriented decisions, and encouraging personnel, particularly young business aspirants, are some of Kapil Jindal's major strengths that set him apart from others.