Speakers | Digital Media Europe 2020
Digital Media Europe 2020
Distribution Director, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany
Stefan Buhr studied business administration and has worked in commercial functions at Gruner+Jahr and SPIEGEL-Verlag. Since 2018, Stefan heads the reader market at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and thus is responsible for the sales business and its digital transformation.
Director of Innovation and Digital Product, Vocento, Spain
Maylis Chevalier is the new director of Innovation and Digital Product, a newly created position whose objective is to strengthen the evolution of their digital products. This new position will allow to reinforce the contact with international technological partners to continue innovating in line to the demands of the market. Maylis will be responsible for supporting the management team with the transversal and integral analysis of the digital product, the study of online editorial media trends and the management of Vocento MediaLab. She has an international economics degree from the Technishe Univesität Berlin and a Master in Digital Business from ISDI. She began her career in 1991 at Procter & Gamble as Key Account Manager. In 1997 she moved to Axel Springer where she led an international executive program and served as Director of Marketing and Sales. In 2006 she joined Gruner+Jahr GmbH as director of strategy and business and later became editor.
Senior Marketing Manager, Belo Media Group, USA
Rachel Watkins, senior marketing lead, at Belo + Company represents multiple channels within the media company including FWD>DFW and The Dallas Morning News while leading B2B strategy, brand aesthetics and integration, and sponsorships for a sales team of about 100. One of her projects of focus is cause marketing-related branded content, partnerships, and revenue, specifically related to FWD>DFW.
Rachel has been with Belo for more than seven years, starting off as marketing manager of the luxury lifestyle publication of The Dallas Morning News before spending four years leading content, experiential sponsorships and strategic partnerships for the live events division of Belo.
Director Reader Revenue, Mediahuis, Belgium
Koen Meeusen is director reader revenue at Mediahuis Belgium since 2017. In this position, he’s responsible for the sales of subscriptions, products, and services to the readers of the four Belgian news brands. Previously Koen worked in different marketing departments of the Belgium publisher. Koen is a marketeer with particular interests in acquisition, retention, e-commerce, brand & content promotion.
VP Commercial Strategy, Technology and R&D, The Washington Post, USA
Jarrod Dicker is an entrepreneurial technology and media executive. He oversees the commercial strategy, operations, technology and R&D at the Washington Post. Until January 2019, Dicker was Chief Executive Officer of Po.et, a platform for a new decentralized media economy.
Prior to Po.et, Dicker served as innovation chief at the Washington Post and founded RED, the Post's research experimentation and development team. There he oversaw the companies technology, product, operations and strategy across the entire business.
Before the Washington Post, Dicker lead strategy, product and technology teams at RebelMouse, Time Inc. and the Huffington Post. He also sits on the Board of Advisors for Rutgers University School of Innovation and Mogul Inc., a technology platform that enables women worldwide to share ideas and access content based on personal interests.
Dicker's writing and work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, AdAge, AdWeek, Digiday, Axios, AdExchanger, Poynter and more.
Managing Director, styria digital one, Austria
Publisher, pv digest (paid content newsletter)
Markus is editor&publisher of pv digest, a paid-for trade publication on the reader revenue side of journalism. Before starting as self-publishing expert for paid content and press distribution, Markus was C-level exec at a national press distribution service provider and a subscription marketing company, both subsidiaries of Axel Springer. He started his career as direct marketing manager at world’s (then) biggest distance retailing company Otto Versand (times are changing!).
(Photo by Hanseshot)
Subscription Director, Le Monde, France
Lou Grasser has been the subscription director of the national daily newspaper Le Monde since October 2019. Previously, she spent four years in the daily newspaper working on audience acquisition and loyalty marketing, then in charge of subscription innovation. Grasser has also worked at Google and Prisma Media.
Global Head of Subscriptions Marketing, The Economist, UK
Director of Innovation & Leadership, Craig Newmark J-School/CUNY, USA
Anita Zielina is leading a new programme at CUNY to train the next generation of news executives to address the demand for innovation and leadership in the industry. Previous roles include visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, researching the role of leadership in times of transition and Chief Product Officer and member of the executive management team at NZZ media group in Switzerland, leading their digital operations.
Before joining NZZ Anita held roles as digital editor and deputy Editor-in-Chief at Stern, the German weekly news magazine published by Gruner + Jahr in Hamburg, and the newspaper Der Standard in Vienna, Austria. In 2012, Anita was the first Austrian journalist selected for the one-year Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, dedicated to entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership in journalism. There her research focused on innovation management in the media and on audience engagement. Anita holds an Executive MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and a Master in Law from Vienna University.
Ingrid Ihasz is the CEO of the Hungarian publisher alliance, HOPPex. She is responsible for developing and supporting publisher programmatic monetization strategies and execution both on HOPPex and publisher level. She has more than 14 years of experience in the advertising industry, working for market leader publishers and agencies (Isobar, Arcus Media, Central European Media & Publishing, Wavemaker, GroupM). Analytical and systematic thinker with a track record of building organizational structures and launching new products and services. Rolled out extended programs to facilitate digital shift within organizations. Recognized professional blogger, influencer and conference speaker since 2006.
Chief Operating Officer, The Ozone Project, UK
Danny’s mission is to help publishers’ create incremental value in their digital advertising businesses by understanding the challenges they face, and by delivering the capability that they need. Before becoming COO at the start of 2020, Danny led the commercial, product and analytics functions of Ozone’s Publisher Platform.
Prior to joining The Ozone Project, Danny was Programmatic Director at Guardian News & Media where he was responsible for global leadership of advertising technology and data strategy as well as UK & ROW programmatic revenue.
Commercial Director, Politiken, Denmark
Head of Subscription Sales and Marketing, Politiken, Denmark
Jørgensen focuses on Politiken’s goal to strengthen and grow its revenue streams from paying subscribers.
Sales encompasses digital channels, telemarketing, BtB-sales and single copy sales. Additionally, she is a member of the Business Management Board of Politiken.
She has been with JP/Politikens Hus (one of Denmark’s leading media houses) from 2007-2015 and again from 2017. JP/Politikens Hus is publishing house for several titles, Ekstra Bladet and Politiken, amongst others.
From 2013-2015, Jørgensen was commercially responsible for the tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladet’s development and launch of its paid content model (which started in 2013). Learnings from both Ekstra Bladet and Politiken, as well as a great European network, give her a thorough knowledge of development phases and failures whilst introducing paid content business models.
From 2015-2017, she was Portfolio Manager at Bonnier Publications in Denmark, being digitally responsible for eight crossborder magazine titles in five countries.
She has a Master of Communications from Aalborg University, Denmark – part of her degree from Brunel University, West London.
Managing Director, Mediapart, France
Marie-Hélène Smiejan-Wanneroy is a founding shareholder of Mediapart, the eleven-year old French internet native daily news site, with today over 160,000 paying members and 4.7 million unique monthly users. Steadily growing since launch, Mediapart broke even eight years ago and generates today > 15% profit margin — without advertising. A group of stable shareholders co-founders and journalists own 62% of equity for 11 years, just transferred to a foundation.
Managing director since day one, Marie-Hélène Smiejan-Wanneroy oversees shareholding, administration, finance, marketing, technology, communications and customer relations. Over ten years her team has grown from three to 43.
Marie-Hélène graduated from the ESSEC business school and holds a degree of Chinese from INALCO (she spent 1975-76 in China). Prior to Mediapart she had a long career in information technologies. She created her first company in 1981 and sold it in 1989. Subsequently she held management positions in a number of European IT groups. In 2003 she created a consultancy to advise investors in China. In 2007 she joined Edwy Plenel to launch Mediapart.
Head of Digital Audience and Project Neon content lead, Archant, UK
Since joining Archant in 2016 Emily has led a significant shift in audience growth and cultural change across the business. She has instilled a new focus on data, insight and analytics as she brings her vision into the heart of the newsrooms. Emily worked in digital content roles at Metro UK and Mail Online before joining Archant in 2016 and her strong journalistic background has enabled her to build local and loyal audiences across the Archant group with an emphasis on data-informed, original and quality content.
Emily joined Project Neon as the content lead in September 2019 and will help launch the first of three Project Neon sites, Peterborough Matters, in partnership with the Google News Initiative’s Local Experiments Project in the coming weeks. She is determined to address the commercial challenges local news publishers face and believes Project Neon is a vital step towards achieving that goal.
Head of Digital Subscriptions, Der Standard, Austria
Florian leads an interdisciplinary team dedicated to developing new revenue streams from digital products at Austria’s largest quality newspaper DER STANDARD. In this role, Florian is responsible for DER STANDARD PUR the ad-free and tracking free subscription as well as the implementation of DER STANDARD’s contributions model. He previously worked for Neue Zürcher Zeitung Austrian branch NZZ.at as Head of Development and founded the online magazine Paroli.
Director of Insights, Diar, Norway
Daniel G. Bredahl is the Director of Insights for Diar, and has more than 10 years experience from the publisher side in different roles from Product Management to Strategy and Insights, mainly from Schibsted and Aller. He has also worked on the creative side for Mobient (now Deloitte Digital) and has worked for clients such as VW, H&M and VISA.
Global Editorial Director, Oovvuu, UK
Lisa Mitchell leads editorial for Oovvuu. Oovvuu is a partnership between 100 broadcasters and publishers to embed a contextually relevant video in every article in the world using AI. Its mission is to repatriate $20 billion in advertising from Facebook and Google back to journalism. Previously, Lisa was a senior manager at the Press Association, MSN and the BBC.
Head of News Partnerships, UK, Ireland, France & Benelux, Google
Bénédicte Autret is Head of Strategic Relations - News & Publishers, UK, Ireland, France & Benelux and head of EMEA Strategic Relationships. She joined the Google Syndication team in 2005 and has embraced the world of partnership with publishers for the past 11 years. First working with traditional publishers across Europe and in 2010 refocusing on the UK market, managing the relationship with publishers such as DMGT, Telegraph, Guardian and Haymarket just to name a few. Benedicte then pivoted to work closely with UK Telcos and broadcasters starting a conversation with existing partners and prospects on new platform technology such as dynamic ad insertion capability. In May 2016, Benedicte joined the newly formed team of European Strategic Relationships, engaging with the news industry in UK, Ireland, France and Benelux. Prior to joining Google, Benedicte worked for WILink Europe. Benedicte holds a degree from the EDHEC Business School Bachelor programme.
Head of Content Strategy, Styria Digital One / Styria Content Creation, Austria
Nicola Dietrich is head of content strategy at styria digital one, Austria’s number one digital publisher regarding reach with a portfolio of around 30 general interest, lifestyle and niche portals with premium content, and of Styria Content Creation, a many times awarded Austrian magazine publisher and content marketing agency. Together with her team she’s constantly working on enlarging the companies’ product portfolio und develops digital solutions for customers in the fields of content marketing and native advertising. The designated digital expert has been in the media industry for more than 15 years. Before becoming head of content strategy she lead the sales development team at styria digital one and previously worked at e.g. kleinezeitung.at, austria.com/plus, oe24.at and before that at T-Mobile and ÖAMTC.
