Keynote Address: Doug Weaver, Founder and CEO of Upstream Group

Session sponsored by 

Feel like the stream of targeting requests is just going to get more and more absurd over time? Worried that “data,” “audience buying” and “real time” are becoming toss-off buzzwords for those who don’t fully understand their implications? Upstream Group CEO and long time industry-watcher Doug Weaver challenges some of the central assumptions that have come to complicate and constrain the roles of the ad operations professional. Weaver offers up the “five big lies” around automation, and imagines a future where much of today’s received wisdom comes into question, and operations comes into true alignment with thoughtful sales leadership. 

About the speaker 

Doug Weaver, Founder and CEO of Upstream Group 

@UpstreamDW 

Those in the online marketing world know Doug Weaver through many different venues.  He’s the author of The Drift, a provocative blog read by more than 6,000 top industry executives; a frequent moderator, host and speaker at iMedia Summit and Ad:tech events; and through both public and private sales workshops he’s trained thousands of interactive salespeople at more than 400 leading companies, including Yahoo!, USA TODAY, CBS Digital Media, The Wall Street Journal, NBC Universal, National Public Radio, ESPN, About.com and The New York Times.
After a 15-year career in print advertising sales with companies like Hearst and Condé Nast, Doug became the advertising director for Wired Magazine in 1994 and sold some of the Web's first ads on the company's Hot Wired site. He then served as Vice President of sales for Firefly Network, a pioneering company in personalization, targeting and community.  He founded Upstream Group in 1997.

 
Doug was elected to the Board of Directors for the Interactive Advertising Bureau and managed the development of both the IAB Road Show (the organization's main presentation to marketers) and the IAB Professional Development Series.  He has spoken on internet advertising issues to CIMA (the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association), the Direct Marketing Association, the Magazine Publishers of America, the Advertising Research Foundation, the Advertising Club of Toronto and other leading organizations on three continents
 
In 1999, Doug received the first IAB Service Award for commitment and contribution to the industry, and in 2008 he received the “Old Timer’s” ASPY Award from the Aspen Group, a coalition of digital agency leaders.  In 2011 he received the Ad:tech Industry Achievement Award for his career-long contribution to the growth and development of the interactive marketing business.  Doug lives and works in Vermont, in sight of historic Lake Champlain and the beautiful Green Mountains, with his wife, Sharon Richards, and daughters Lucy and Madeline.

About the sponsor OpenX

OpenX is the world’s leading independent provider of digital advertising technology that enables businesses to manage and maximize their ad revenue. OpenX products, including OpenX Enterprise and OpenX Market, provide a comprehensive revenue generation platform by combining ad serving with a unique ad exchange. OpenX ad serving products are used by more than 200,000 websites in more than 100 countries and serve more than 350 billion ads monthly. OpenX Market reaches more than 400 million monthly unique users worldwide.