Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series

How to Build An Ad Based Business

Monday, February 7, 2011
6:30-8:30pm
Wells Fargo Room - Haas School of Business

[Presentation available as a PDF]

Program Information and Speaker Biographies

Video (video on YouTube site):

Program Information and Speaker Biographies

In the post Android world, some have argued that the most valuable commodity is consumer attention. Savvy consumers are leveraging competitive offerings to get digital services and content for free, leaving the underlying businesses dependent on advertising to monetize their offering. The explosion of digital content has flooded an already saturated marketplace with a new generation of ad sellers, many of whom falsely equate growing page view counts with guaranteed revenue generation. This session will bring in practitioners from the advertising industry, from both the buy and sell sides, to discuss the requirements for an ad based business. Come learn how to capture value in advertising products and how to market your ad product at different stages of your company’s lifecycle for maximum return.

The program starts with food and networking at 6:30pm. The presentation will open at 7:00 pm. There is no registration for this event. For more information about the Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series, call 510-642-4255 or email lester@haas.berkeley.edu.

FEATURED SPEAKERS

Brian Monahan

Executive Vice President; Managing Partner, IPG Media Lab
Universal McCann

Chas Edwards

Chief Revenue Officer

Pixazza

Will Price

CEO
Widgetbox

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Brian Monahan, EVP; Managing Partner, IPG Media Lab
Universal McCann

Brian Monahan was raised an all-out, outdoorsy farm boy. These days, when he’s not researching and improving the ins and outs of “social business transformation” and “gravitational mass media,” he’s outdoors in the Marin Headlands or tinkering with his vegetable oil fueled automobiles.

Brian’s adventurous, hands-on spirit makes him the ultimate can-do person. He even braves the wilds of the San Francisco Unified School District to incorporate digital media in to the educational experience. If he can handle teens and tweens, imagine what he can do for you…

An entrepreneur trapped in a media planner’s body, Brian has driven digital change in the 8 years he has spent with IPG. He launched the interactive capability at Universal McCann, and later led integration of that 30-person team with the traditional UM planning group. He led multinational and cross-platform communications strategy for Clients like Microsoft, Charles Schwab, and Wells Fargo. Immediately prior to joining the Lab, Brian served as the Social Media thought leader for the UM network and launched Rally@UM. Brian sits on IPG Mediabrands’ Digital Operating Committee where he has launched programs like the Greenhaus start up partner program, the global Digital Fellowship, the Media Optimization & Management Suite (MOMS) enterprise software initiative, and Cadreon -- IPG’s demand-side audience marketplace.

Like a kid in a candy store, Brian currently oversees the IPG Media Lab and is constantly on the lookout for ways to apply communication technology to meaningfully drive Clients’ business.

Prior to joining UM, Brian founded Inrhythm Marketing – a pioneering analytics and optimization firm. He was a founding employee of Left Field, one of the first San Francisco-based digital ad agencies, and a co-founder the Bay Area Interactive Group. Earning accolades such as “Internet Media Buyer of the Year” and “Media All Star” by trade magazines, he drafted the original Terms and Conditions of the industry standard Internet media insertion order, and has served on the agency advisory boards of Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL.

Chas Edwards
Chief Revenue Officer

Pixazza

Chas joined Pixazza in 2010 as chief revenue officer and head of publisher development. Before Pixazza, he served as publisher and CRO at Digg, the site that allows readers to organize content from across the web by voting on what they consider to be the best. For the four years prior to joining Digg, Chas was the co-founder (with John Battelle), publisher and chief revenue officer at Federated Media Publishing (FM), a next-generation media and publishing company that connects the highest quality conversational content (eg, Boing Boing, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable, Inhabitat, Dooce, NOTCOT and The Pioneer Woman) with leading brand marketers.

Previously, Chas was vice president of sales and marketing for CNET Networks’s B2B Portfolio, managing the team representing News.com, ZDNet and TechRepublic to business-to-business marketers. He also served posts as VP for CNET’s broadband & webcasting unit and as VP of business development for mySimon, CNET Networks’s comparison-shopping portal. Prior to joining CNET Networks, Chas was the National Sales Manager for TechTV, a 24-hour cable TV channel and Web site dedicated to computing and the Internet (now owned by Comcast and called G4).

He publishes his views on digital marketing at http://chasnote.com and http://twitter.com/chasnote.

Will Price
CEO
Widgetbox

Will Price is the CEO of Widgetbox. Widgetbox is the leader in brand experience delivery advertising. Backed by Sequoia Capital, the company powers ad innovation for Yahoo!, LinkedIn, CBS, Bloomberg, Forbes, Digg, Federated Media, Demand Media, Yelp, and other tier one publishers. Brand customers include Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Toyota, Sony Entertainment, Cisco, and the leading Ad Age 200 brands.

Prior to joining Widgetbox, Will was managing director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Prior to joining Hummer Winblad, Will was a senior vice president with Pequot Ventures, where he focused on investments in information technology. Previously, Will served as CEO and COO of several software start-ups. Will graduated from Harvard College and earned his M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

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