Benedict Evans has spent 20 years analysing mobile, media and technology, and worked in equity research, strategy, consulting and venture capital. He is now an independent analyst.

Rob is the principal provider of operational, strategic and tactical counsel for solutions for better digital advertising infrastructure and opportunities for revenue growth to some of the worlds largest companies.  Rob publishes a regular monthly column for Marketing Land and his thought leadership has been featured in AdAge, AdWeek, Mediapost, AdExchanger, Business Insider and MyersBizNet.While at The 614 Group, Rob has led strategic engagements for clients such as Condé Nast, Interpublic / Mediabrands, IBM Watson, TAG, and Panasonic and has worked to recruit a world class board of advisors and a team of consultants who properly represent the brand and make customer satisfaction a core value.He has extensive experience in digital media and is a distinguished leader in the Ad Tech industry.  Among his many accomplishments, Rob has served as Board Member and Executive Advisor to the IAB on International Affairs, as the CFO/COO and President of the global advertising network CPXi.

Mr. MBA is a TikTok creator.

Rob is the principal provider of operational, strategic and tactical counsel for solutions for better digital advertising infrastructure and opportunities for revenue growth to some of the worlds largest companies.  Rob publishes a regular monthly column for Marketing Land and his thought leadership has been featured in AdAge, AdWeek, Mediapost, AdExchanger, Business Insider and MyersBizNet.While at The 614 Group, Rob has led strategic engagements for clients such as Condé Nast, Interpublic / Mediabrands, IBM Watson, TAG, and Panasonic and has worked to recruit a world class board of advisors and a team of consultants who properly represent the brand and make customer satisfaction a core value.He has extensive experience in digital media and is a distinguished leader in the Ad Tech industry.  Among his many accomplishments, Rob has served as Board Member and Executive Advisor to the IAB on International Affairs, as the CFO/COO and President of the global advertising network CPXi.

Tom Burns is the Managing Director of Partnerships and Standards, EMEA, for Publicis Media. Through his global standards work, Tom is one of the Publicis Media leads across key topics such as media quality, brand safety & suitability and brand integrity. Tom is dedicated to improving media quality across the entire digital ecosystem, ensuring that Publicis teams and clients have all of the resources and direction they need to confidently activate their digital media.

Yale Cohen serves as the EVP of Global Digital Standards for Publicis Media, encompassing all areas of media quality, safety and suitability, and now Brand Integrity to help advertisers understand the value of each individual impression and how culture has impacted marketers’ decision process. He has become Publicis Media’s industry voice for Standards, incorporating client needs for partners to adhere to Publicis’ stringent expectations. Throughout his 18 years of digital advertising experience, 12 of them with Publicis, Yale has worked alongside clients including Bank of America, Verizon, and Kellogg’s to simplify the complexities of our industry. He’s the chair of the 4A’s Advertiser Protection Bureau, honoree of Adweek’s Young Influential list, and part of numerous charity organizations.  Yale currently resides in Jersey City but grew up in Houston. Outside of the office, he is a dedicated father to his son, Cassius and daughter Vera. Fun fact: Yale was an alternate to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens for the sport of Fencing.

Craig is Global Media Director within Reckitt’s Marketing Excellence Data Driven Marketing and Media Team. After gaining 2 decades of media agency experience he moved to Reckitt in 2016 as Head of Media for the UK business. He joined the MX team last year, and his role now focuses on defining and scaling global media and digital best practice, at both channel and brand level. His team focuses on evolving media activation and implementational data driven strategy, to drive improvement in both media efficiency and effectiveness. This is as well as overseeing the accountable brand safety and suitability strategy for Reckitt’s brand portfolio to deliver responsible media activation across their digital partnerships and investment.

Tyrone Stewart is the Content Strategy Lead for New Age Digital.

As EVP, Global Head of Brand Assurance, Deva leads dentsu’s US and Global Media Brand Assurance offerings, bringing together Brand Responsibility, Brand Safety, and Brand Suitability to address evolving media threats and enable clients to make the best, most responsible media decisions. In this role, Deva partners closely with others across the organization, including on the Investment and Economic Empowerment teams, to constantly monitor and understand best practices in deliverability, suitability, viewability, responsibility, and sustainability. Deva is also leading the creation of a global Brand Assurance steering committee. Prior to taking on the Brand Assurance leadership role this year, Deva served as the EVP, Head of Digital Investment, leading marketplace strategy and positioning across digital & publishing for dentsu’s US media agencies.A true digital native with nearly 20 years of experience in the media industry, Deva spent several years within GroupM and Publicis agencies, with client experience spanning the Technology, Pharmaceutical, CPG, Retail, Financial Services and B2B verticals. Deva also spent three years on the client side within the KFC Corporation and was responsible for the development and launch of the brand’s digital marketing discipline.

Having worked across Mediacom's biggest clients including Tesco, Boots and Coke, I now oversee all clients holistically.

I drive functional adoption of new products and features across all platforms while constantly searching for the best tech partners to help elevate our clients above their competitors. I always have a real-time POV on the best measurement solutions and automation and workflow management tools out there to ensure my clients and teams are operating optimally.

My biggest strength lies in people. I encourage my teams to continually better themselves and do this by creating bespoke training and driving accreditation across all platforms.

Samantha Stetson is a seasoned leader with over 25 years of marketing and sales experience in technology and healthcare IT. Samantha’s career reflects a proven track record of building and leading programs that extract a huge amount of impact from small teams.  She is seen as a visionary who can make things happen. She has a deep passion for striving for excellence and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. She has served in a global capacity, which has allowed her to develop a deep empathy for the world we live in and the challenges outside of the United States. Samantha is currently the VP of the Client Council and Industry Trade Relations Team at Meta. The team’s mission is to foster a “customer first, customer best” culture throughout Meta. During her 9 years at Meta, Samantha has been responsible for building Meta’s Client Council franchise. The Councils are made up of top marketing and agency executives from Meta’s key clients and agency partners such as P&G, Unilever, Netflix, Pepsi, Coke, Walmart, etc., and the six major agency holding companies. She grew the franchise from one global council in 2011 to 14 global and regional Councils by end of 2020. Through these councils, she learned how to build deep cross functional relationships and manage complex issues to drive internal and external alignment.  The Councils are seen as an indispensable part of Meta’s commitment to listening to their Customers and building deep relationships grounded in trust. The feedback gleaned during these meetings has helped influence some of Meta’s most important go-to-market strategies Samantha and her team are also responsible for leading relationships with the industry trade associations to partner on some of the most complex challenges facing the future of the digital ecosystem from brand safety to cross media measurement to data privacy.Samantha lives in Newtown Square, PA with her husband David and two children, Hadley (13) and Hunter (15). In her spare time, she enjoys Bikram Yoga and skiing. She grew up as a competitive figure skater and competed in the US National Championships.

Angie is the Director for Marketing Science in Northern Europe, leading teams in the UK and Sweden that help businesses grow by transforming marketing practices grounded in data and science. Angie has been working in advertising for over 20 years at media owners, agencies, marketing research and for the last three years at Meta. She has held senior roles at Microsoft Advertising, was MD for EMEA at Xaxis (part of GroupM), and EMEA CEO for Kantar Lightspeed (now Kantar Profiles). Angie started life as an engineer and has just completed a post-graduate degree in AI for Business at Oxford, Said Business School. She is a passionate AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego).

Dr Alex Connock is an Oxford academic in the media business and author of the 2022 book ‘Media Management and Artificial Intelligence.’ Academically, Alex is Senior Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, teaching Marketing and Media Business courses at BA, MBA and EMBA level. He is Academic Director of the Oxford postgraduate diploma in Artificial Intelligence for Business. and Lecturer at St Hugh’s College, Oxford in Management. Alex is also Professor of Media and Artificial Intelligence at Exeter University, and Head of Department in Creative Business at the UK’s National Film and Television School. He has a PhD in video optimisation for e-commerce and degrees from Oxford (PPE) Columbia (Journalism) and INSEAD (MBA). Entrepreneurially, Alex has created and grown multiple media companies. Most recently he is non-exec at Shoreditch-based digital/social agency The Tree.   From 2012-17 he was Managing Director of TV and digital production business Endemol Shine North (now Workerbee) through a period of substantial growth. Between 1998 and 2011 he co-founded, and ran as CEO, the media group Ten Alps (now Zinc Media) with Bob Geldof - producing hundreds of programmes for UK and international broadcasters, as well as substantial digital and branded content output, including the UK government's Teachers TV project. He has worked directly for BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and PEOPLE Magazine. He has been six times shortlisted as Entrepreneur of the Year. In the charity sector Alex is Vice Chair at UNICEF UK and a director at the The Halle Orchestra.

I manage Global Press News Services, the social enterprise arm of Global Press. GPNS draws upon Global Press' 17 years of experience in journalism training, a one-of-a-kind global photo archive, the industry's leading Duty of Care program, and the world's first multi-language guide to writing with equity and precision -- creating products and services that meet the demand of clients across the media sector and a range of industries.

Jacqui Stephenson is the Global Responsible Marketing Officer for Mars, Inc.

Award-winning global marketer with 20+ years of experience spanning creative, media, research, and strategy functions from both agency and client perspectives. Expert in shaping multifunctional teams to harvest growth with a focus on fusing communications and commerce with technology and data. Adept at reshaping and leading client-agency teams to address changing media and retail landscape using insight, investment and innovation. Nationally ranked cyclist bringing performance team building into the office. Advocate for talent development and coaching within teams to achieve goals. Passionate about identifying marketplace trends and opportunities and translating them into positive growth platforms for top global brands including Mars, American Express, Visa, Pernod Ricard, P&G & McDonald’s.

Emma Lacey brings over 15 years of experience in building successful commercial teams across the advertising industry. In her most recent role, Emma was part of the EMEA leadership team at OpenX, working as senior director of buyer development to secure strategic partnerships with media agencies and brands. In addition, she has held senior positions within a range of media and ad tech businesses, including AOL, Sky and Blis.

Alex Thomas is the Director, Brand Safety & Responsible Investment for GroupM EMEA.

Anthony is an expert on responsible, sustainable, brand-safe and effective advertising. He pioneered The Telegraph’s Metrics That Matter effectiveness reporting, which has been widely adopted by the industry. He is an advocate of good attention and is working across the industry to enable our carbon neutral, fully inclusive future. 

Arshiya Nazir is Programmatic Strategy Director at Dentsu UK. Evangelising the Dentsu difference between the Product, Planning and Programmatic teams, recently navigating the agency and their clients around the evolving cookieless, omnichannel and brand safety landscape. She has worked in the media industry for a decade, with almost five years spent at The Telegraph.

Tina is an an expert consultant in marketing communication and digital transformation with excellent leadership and negotiation skills.  Her working knowledge in advertising and media (traditional, digital, cross-channel and innovations) is complemented with a high commitment to effectiveness, customer satisfaction and consumer/shopper understanding and responsibility/sustainability. From January 2023 Tina was appointed Media Transformation Lead for Europe to drive a complete review of Nestlé’s media agency model to enable a seamless and integrated audience-first media communications approach across categories and markets.

Since 2019 Tina has been leading Global Media Communication at Nestlé HQ and from January 2021, she took on additional responsibilities in the role of Global Media Communications and Partnership Head leading Integrated Media (Digital and Programmatic Media) and the Global Media/Digital Partnerships.

Tina has a proven track record in managing agencies, and is competent in working successfully in diverse and international teams.  She has natural networking skills which have provided her with valuable contacts in media, marketing and agencies throughout her career.

Leading 'Digital Transformation' for Nestlé Germany 2014-2019 broadened her knowledge along the whole value chain and also in change management.  Moderating cross functional digital teams in a network organization has deepened her ability to implement changes in the company and to intensify data-based decisions and to adapt (test and learn).

Her work as chairwoman of OWM 2013-2019 (Advertisers Association Germany), as well as being a member of WFA Global Media Board as of 2019 complement her profile as a senior executive.

Award-winning global marketer with 20+ years of experience spanning creative, media, research, and strategy functions from both agency and client perspectives. Expert in shaping multifunctional teams to harvest growth with a focus on fusing communications and commerce with technology and data. Adept at reshaping and leading client-agency teams to address changing media and retail landscape using insight, investment and innovation. Nationally ranked cyclist bringing performance team building into the office. Advocate for talent development and coaching within teams to achieve goals. Passionate about identifying marketplace trends and opportunities and translating them into positive growth platforms for top global brands including Mars, American Express, Visa, Pernod Ricard, P&G & McDonald’s.

Dave Byrne is the Director of Brand Safety at Spotify, where he works cross functionally and with external partners to improve the digital advertising ecosystem. Dave represents Spotify in discussions around building trustworthy and safe creative environments for brands. Previously, Dave was at TikTok for 3 years and Google for 11 years - working out of Dublin, London, and New York during that time. Outside of Spotify, he is a startup mentor, podcast host and runs storytelling workshops.

Jules Kendrick is a dynamic senior leader, with a proven track record of driving growth, managing and developing teams, building successful relationships with clients and agencies and exceeding revenue targets.

Following 16 years working in media on both agency and broadcaster side Allie moved into the Anti-Piracy world. Now leading the Sky Group function across Advertising and Payment Strategy Allie applies her media knowledge to drive down advertising and payment monetisation by pirates. This involves working with vendors, payment providers and law enforcement authorities to identify areas of concern, disable revenue streams and drive lasting change across the industry.

Mike Lyden, TAG's Vice President of Threat Intelligence, oversees the TAG Threat Exchange. TAG's Threat Exchange program enables the TAG Community to share real-time intelligence about threats they see, stay abreast of new and emerging threats that could affect their operations, and protect the digital advertising supply chain.

Mike spent 17 years as a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, where he most recently served as the Senior Intelligence Officer and Associate Director for Intelligence Management for the Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), a federal law enforcement organization. Mike is passionate about intellectual property rights protection and while at OSI, specialized in counterintelligence, due diligence, and supply chain risk management support to the National Security Innovation Base, emerging technologies, and the microelectronics industry.

Mike enjoys volunteering as a mentor for national security-focused startup accelerators, studied psychology and chemistry at Case Western Reserve University where he also played varsity football, and earned his M.S. in Applied Intelligence from Mercyhurst University.

As Head of Content, John leads ExchangeWire’s editorial team, curating and developing original content across the company’s portfolio of written, visual and audio content for ExchangeWire’s global audience, as well moderating panels at the ATS event series and hosting the MadTech Podcast. Before joining ExchangeWire, John spent five years at The Guardian in roles across editorial, marketing and events.

Betsy McLeod (she/her) has worked in international digital media for 11 years, with an emphasis on finance and legal advertising. She is currently the Sr. Marketing Manager for International Media at H&R Block in Kansas City, directing global media campaigns for H&R Block’s overseas audiences. She is a founding member and the first Chair of COLORS, H&R Block’s LGBTQ+ Belonging Group with 800+ members, where she advises the company on LGBTQ+ strategy and messaging and coordinates learning and volunteer opportunities.As part of her work with international media and COLORS, Betsy strives to hold H&R Block accountable for having diverse, inclusive advertising and communications campaigns, and is committed to helping make the company an inclusive place for all. She currently lives in Kansas City with her wife, Diane. Depending on the season, you can find Betsy on the weekends either at her farm riding her horse, Pistol Pete, cheering on the Chiefs, or traveling the U.S.

As EVP, Global Head of Brand Assurance, Deva leads dentsu’s US and Global Media Brand Assurance offerings, bringing together Brand Responsibility, Brand Safety, and Brand Suitability to address evolving media threats and enable clients to make the best, most responsible media decisions. In this role, Deva partners closely with others across the organization, including on the Investment and Economic Empowerment teams, to constantly monitor and understand best practices in deliverability, suitability, viewability, responsibility, and sustainability. Deva is also leading the creation of a global Brand Assurance steering committee. Prior to taking on the Brand Assurance leadership role this year, Deva served as the EVP, Head of Digital Investment, leading marketplace strategy and positioning across digital & publishing for dentsu’s US media agencies.A true digital native with nearly 20 years of experience in the media industry, Deva spent several years within GroupM and Publicis agencies, with client experience spanning the Technology, Pharmaceutical, CPG, Retail, Financial Services and B2B verticals. Deva also spent three years on the client side within the KFC Corporation and was responsible for the development and launch of the brand’s digital marketing discipline.

Deborah Gbadamosi (the ‘G’ is silent) is the new EMEA CEO for Brand Advance Group.  She has more than 25 years of media leadership experience in agency, client and ad sales companies.  Developing the digital strategy for advertisers in the automotive, finance, tech and entertainment industry.

In the last three years Deborah has given some of her attention to driving change in the way audiences are selected and included in brand campaigns, to ensure under-represented consumers are given due care and consideration as a viable and important target audience.  Deborah has been recognised for her contributions to Inclusion and Diversity in the ad industry, receiving a Campaign Female Frontiers Award and an Ad Age Leading Women in Europe Award.

Moving to Brand Advance will allow her to have a single-minded focus on inclusive advertising, particularly in improving data representation, re-defining brand safety for more inclusivity, and upskilling the industry on how to plan more inclusively.

James is responsible for Product Development and Strategic Solutions at Matterkind UK and Ireland, IPG’s (Interpublic Group) activation intelligence company.

Since joining Havas in 2012, and subsequently Dentsu in 2016, James has specialised in the Programmatic space working in the Trading Desks of both holding groups for flagship accounts such as Microsoft, Diageo & Mastercard.

At Matterkind, James is responsible for regular thought leadership and trend identification – both of which manifest in the development of solutions that ensure IPG clients have access to market leading capabilities that combine proprietary and marketplace data and technology.

Following a career in London advertising agencies, Dan is a Senior Partnerships Development Manager at WWF-UK having been there for over 4 years; establishing some of the most impactful working relationships between major corporates and the environmental sector across the globe. Some examples include Vodafone, ScottishPower, TikTok and Reckitt Benckiser.