The awards are judged by an esteemed panel of industry leaders and experts, the judging is a rigorous two-stage process including pre-scoring to determine shortlists and a judging meeting where entries are discussed and evaluated in detail to decide the winning entries.
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Judges
Brendan Almack | Managing Director | Wolfgang Digital
In a previous life, Brendan worked as a Geotechnical Engineer analysing data and trying to use the data to solve problems. Now he works in digital marketing… and does pretty much the same thing. Brendan is the Managing Director of Wolfgang Digital based in Dublin, Ireland. He is particularly interested in performance digital marketing with a focus on integrating marketing activities across multiple channels. Like all Wolfgangers, he’s obsessed with defining and accurately measuring campaign KPI’s. Brendan’s work has won multiple Irish & International awards including “Best Integrated Strategy” at the Drum Awards. Brendan is a regular speaker on the international circuit having spoken at Hero Conf, SMX, SES, Friends of Search and 3XE.
Hessam Amiri | Paid Media and SEO Manager | The Royal Mint
Hessam began his digital career in 2014 for maternity cover as digital marketing executive, his passion for digital has allowed him to become the leading SEO/PPC for one of the oldest companies in the world The Royal Mint! Hessam has been managing, developing the main channels for the past 4 years which was part of the winning team in 2017 for two separate search awards. Outside the world of digital, Hessam is also a Governor for University Hospitals Bristol & Weston but also an ambassador of Daring to Dream charity. Hessam has always been pushing the boundaries in digital but also in life by having his family story made into Play on the big screens but also (soon to be announced) virtual reality experience for digital world!
Jim Banks | CEO | Spades Media | @UKSpadesMedia
Jim is the CEO of UK based growth agency Spades Media. Jim has been a paid media practitioner since 1999 and has worked client side as well as agency side. Jim helps ecommerce businesses scale their paid media efforts across all channels. Jim is a regular face on the judging panel at the UK, European, MENA and US Search awards and is a returning judge for the 2022 UK Paid Media Awards. Never one to shy away from giving a differing opinion on what constitutes award-winning entries to other judges, Jim enjoys critiquing entries at the Awards and seeing what the paid media community are working on.
Joanna Bodley | Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing & Marketing | Manchester Metropolitan University
With over ten years’ experience, Joanna Bodley has seen every side of the industry from creative to comms and large to small agencies, as well as in-house teams. She has developed, implemented and overseen social and digital strategies and provided guidance for a wide range of clients like The Co-operative Bank, Gumtree and Chewits. She has a keen understanding of the complexities involved in making digital, social media, content and advertising efforts a success. She harnesses this as a speaker and professional educator, having delivered training for numerous organisations, including Econsultancy. Jo is now a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and course director for their MSc Digital Marketing programme, sharing her experience with the next generation of marketers. She also runs her own consultancy, Jo & Co.
Paris de Reuck | Content & Community Strategist | Freelance Marketing Constultant
With over 14 years of experience in media and marketing. Paris has a wealth of content marketing, social media and SEO experience, working independently with high growth companies. Previously, Paris spent ten years working as Head of Social media, influencer marketing and editorial content, media agency side, working with clients including Dell, Intel, EasyJet, Rimmel London and Bayer.
Michael Durey | Head of Digital & CRM | Samsung
Michael joined Samsung in 2018 and since then has helped to deliver triple digit Ecommerce growth through Samsung’s owned eStore, EPP and Student websites. Aligning Digital Marketing strategies across Search (Paid and Organic), Affiliates, CRM, Paid Social, Programmatic Display and Online Video has allowed Samsung to maximise in-market traffic through to Samsung.com and ultimately has led to the most successful flagship launches and Black Friday sales periods the company has ever had.
Ellie England | Sales Director | Microsoft
Passionate about digital, women in technology and making a lasting impact, Ellie began her career in sales working in an inner city secondary school 'selling' the importance of modern languages to disaffected teenagers. She got in to the world of digital advertising working for Google for 6 years, before eventually relocating to Manchester and joining Microsoft. As a Sales Director for Microsoft Advertising, for the past 5 years. Ellie has been spearheading the continued investment in the North of the UK and beyond, leading a growing team of Account Managers and Directors and juggling life as a proud mother of two pre-schoolers.
Amanda Farley | VP of Growth | Aimclear
Amanda Farley is a marketer, performance strategist, and business success leader. She is VP of Growth at Aimclear®, a highly decorated, integrated marketing agency dominant in customer acquisition and winner of 17 US Search Awards including 5X most recent Best Integrated Agency. Aimclear's differentiator is the balance of holistic brand-builds, PR, data, and integrated performance marketing. Amanda’s experience includes 11+ years as Managing Partner running a 20-person integrated team which achieved national recognition. Her B2B and B2C marketing leadership experience runs deep in healthcare, professional services, ecommerce, and global IoT (smart homes, smart cities, smart cars, etc.). Her expertise extends international agriculture, food conglomerates, influencer driven ecommerce sales, automotive aftermarket diagnostic tooling and electric vehicle charging systems, finance, major non-profits, and other verticals.
Max Hopkinson | Joint MD | Bind | @
Max is joint MD of digital marketing agency Bind. He has previously held C level marketing positions at TyresOnTheDrive, Iceland Foods and various technology startups. He learned his trade working as an Industry Manger at Google. Outside work Max is a hands on Dad, teaches children to ski and is governor of Manchester primary school Old Hall Drive Academy. His long term ambition is to change how business (and marketing) is taught in schools by leveraging talent and experience from the private sector.
Ben Irons | Senior Sales Manager | Microsoft Advertising
An experienced Digital Marketing professional, Ben joined the Microsoft Advertising team in October 2018. Ben leads a sales team of Account Directors and Managers, servicing agencies and clients directly, with the aim of utilising both Bing and other Microsoft products to answer business challenges and drive performance for advertisers across the Microsoft Advertising network. Ben has over ten years’ experience in the Digital Marketing industry and has held digital roles with Yahoo Search, iProspect and PHD Media, and most recently as Digital Director for online retail marketplace Notonthehighstreet.com. Ben is a consistent contributor to the industry, presenting and judging at numerous industry events including Search Engine Strategies (SES), Drum Search Marketing and UK Biddable Media Awards for the last few years.
Rob Linton | Director of Key Accounts | MiQ
As a Director of Key Accounts at global programmatic media company MiQ, Rob oversees the operational and commercial teams in the Northern UK business. Starting out as a media trader in 2013, Rob now leads agency relationships and advises brands across multiple sectors, including travel, retail and direct to consumer, on programmatic strategy and execution. An expert in digital, and a key industry player, Rob is a champion of North England’s vibrant digital community. He educates brands on digital marketing, providing tutorship and workshops specifically for businesses undergoing transformation. A seasoned speaker, and MiQ representative at Manchester India Partnership events, a Digital City Festival speaker and awards judge, Rob is also ‘Digital Futures’ Ambassador with Manchester Digital.
Magda Marchowska-raza | Lecturer in Digital Marketing | Manchester Metropolitan University
Magda is passionate about social media marketing and creative marketing. She combines practice and research as she supports the social media efforts of small companies while finishing her PhD on value creation and consumer engagement within social media brand communities. As a Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, Magda shares her passion with students.
Martin Michels | Global Paid Search Lead | TUI
Martin Michels is the group paid search lead for TUI where he set up a centre of excellence and coordinates strategies across multiple markets. He has experience in B2C and B2B marketing. He began his career in a start-up company and worked most of his career in the travel industry. He enjoys automating (work) processes, solving complex problems, and experimenting with new ideas
Rumyana Miteva | Head of Performance & Revenue | Secret Escapes
Rumyana is an experienced digital marketer with a great passion for the Travel industry. As Head of Performance & Revenue, she is leading a team of Paid Search, SEO and Social Media specialists. Prior to joining Secret Escapes she has helped several other Ecommerce & Travel brands grow their online presence. Rumyana is a regular conference speaker on topics such as Machine Learning, Automation and Performance Marketing Best Practices.
Colin Murphy | Paid Media Manager | Just Eat
Colin is the Paid Media Lead for Just Eat UK, joining the company in 2016 having previously worked agency-side at ZenithOptimedia. Originally joining in a purely digital role, Colin has since moved into a wider paid media function, taking the lead on all national ATL media for Just Eat's largest market globally. He's been heavily involved in key activations, most notably Love Island, Euro2020, and bringing the one and only Snoop Dogg to our TV screens since 2020.
Jon Myers | Founder | ASCENDING MEDIA
Jon is an experienced leader within the Digital Marketplace with over 19 years’ experience and has demonstrated dedication to the industry over his career which has been recognised when he was awarded Search Personality of the Year 2017 at the UK Search Awards and also voted into Europe’s Top50 Performance Markets 2017. He has worked in senior roles for large agencies, publisher-side with Yahoo, and more recently the Ad Technology space as VP and MD EMEA of Marin Software before joining DeepCrawl.and then setting up his own company Ascending Media.He has experience in Paid Search since its inception, and has also worked heavily in SEO, Display and Paid Social over the years. This broad range has given Jon a strong understanding of all sides of the market, a sharp business knowledge and skill set, and many connections across EMEA and the US who recognise him for his experience and thought leadership within the online advertising industry.Jon is extremely active in the Search community, and is most likely to be found moderating, speaking and sharing his knowledge at conferences, webinars and events across the world. He also frequently acts as a judge for awards in the industry, including the UK Search Awards, European Search Awards, US Search Awards and Performance Marketing Awards to name a few.
Sangeetha Narasimhan | Director, Global Acquisition Marketing | Mambu
Sangeetha is passionate about combining data driven marketing and storytelling to build engaging marketing programmes. Leading the acquisition marketing at Mambu, she is currently responsible for marketing contribution to revenue generation. With over 15 years of marketing experience and with a strong focus on digital demand generation in companies as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Sage Pay, Ingenico and Worldline, Sangeetha is an expert is setting up teams, tools and running marketing initiatives to scale across geographies and help businesses build momentum. She is a keen advocate of high intent marketing and always pushes the boundaries to bring together digital and social tactics to deliver best in class customer engagement experiences.
Luis Navarrete Gomez | Senior Director | Liberty Global
Luis is Head of Digital Marketing, Sr. Director at Liberty Latin America, one of the biggest Telecom groups in the Latam region and leads digital marketing activity for the group and its subsidiaries. In his time in the company, Luis has shaped the digital marketing experiences in an organization that reaches both B2B and B2C customers in more than 40 markets. He is a regular writer and speaker about Digital Marketing and business leadership and plays an active role in the search community. He is a fellow member of the Marketing Society, a member of the advisory board of The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, and participates actively at conferences and specialized publications. He is also a member of the judging panels of industry-leading awards, such as the DMA Awards, the UK and US Search Awards, The Drum, and The Biddable Media awards. Luis has a technical background in computer science and has more than 18 years of experience in Digital Marketing with cross-functional expertise in technology and business management and leadership. Specialties: Leadership, Digital Marketing, Strategy, Growth, Paid Search, Social Media, Display, Audience management, SEO, Digital Transformation.
SAMANTHA NOBLE | FOUNDER | BIDDABLE MOMENTS | @SamJaneNoble
Samantha Noble is the Founder of Biddable Moments, an Paid Media Consultancy Agency dedicated to helping brands increase their revenue through PPC and audience development. Samantha won the UK Search Personality Award at the UK Search Awards 2016 and was also rated one of the top 25 in PPC Heros ‘Most Influential PPC Experts’ list in 2016 and 2017. Back in 2011, Samantha also founded the Digital Females group which now has in excess of 750 members and has held 16 events to date.
Tiago Perdigao | CEO | Fractal Mind Portugal
Tiago is an experienced Manager with +25 years of experience in the areas of marketing, sales and retail, having worked in companies such as adidas, Jeronimo Martins, Sonae and FNAC. He has worked for adidas as Portugal Marketing Director and as Director of Brand Activation for the regions of Africa and the Middle East (MENA) where he received many media, activation and retail awards. He also as been part of several jury panels in marketing awards events on the region. A true team player, he has extensive national and international experience in various business areas so he feels at home anywhere on the globe, and in any kind of project. Always pioneering in the use of new technologies to the business world, he took on gamification as his latest challenge in 2017, currently leading Gamification startups in both Portugal and the UK. He achieved is Bachelors in Management in Portugal, followed by an MBA with Marketing focus in the UK. More recently he concluded a Post-Graduation Diploma in Retail Management and another in Arts Markets and Collections. He is also a long time Member of the CIM (MCIM) and (believe it or not!) a Chartered Accountant.
Polly Pospelova | Digital Marketing Director | Delete
Polly is the Delete agency’s digital marketing director. She works with SEO consultants, PPC managers, content & PR consultants, and technical developers. Polly works on digital strategies and solutions for major brands in sectors including higher education, sport, property, travel and more. She is also a search marketing conference speaker on SEO, page speed and performance and digital marketing.
Claire Stanley-Manock | Paid Media Director | connective3
Claire has over 15 years of digital marketing experience and knows how to navigate the complex paid media landscape to deliver incremental growth for clients. Campaigns are planned with strategic creativity and delivered with personalisation to generate cut through, emotion and results.
Heana Thakur | Head of Paid Search | Sainsbury's | Argos
After a brief stint in creative marketing, Heana began her digital career in 2015 working for one of largest digital marketing agencies Merkle. She started as an exec fresh out of university working her way to director level. In this time, she worked on a variety of clients including Sky, The BodyShop, Uniqlo and Facebook. Outside of her day-to-day role, Heana was also involved in the recruitment of the paid search team, mentoring junior members of the department, delivering internal training sessions, working on commercial pitches and being a part of the Diversity & Leadership committee. Heana is passionate about change within organisations and sat on the Gender Pillar committee for 4 years helping to deliver events such as International Women's Day and organising networking events. She also spoke at a variety of different universities including the University of Surrey and University of Brighton to educate students about the life of a digital marketer. In November 2021, Heana switched from agency side to client side and she now leads the in-house paid search team at Sainsbury's, Argos and Habitat.
Thomas Vosper | Founder | Aisle 3
With over 12 years in ecommerce Thomas has a long record of delivering growth for many of the largest names online. During over six years at Amazon, he led strategic seller acquisitions; executed new category launches; and delivered cutting-edge merchant services. After moving to Tesco, he tripled their marketplace business in twelve months. He founded online marketplace Aisle3 in March 2020. Thomas has a detailed insight on strategy, performance marketing and operations across thousands of eCommerce sites, high street stores, and digital marketing agencies
Marty Weintraub | Founder | Aimclear
Marty is an entrepreneur, marketer, photographer, speaker, and BWCA wilderness guide. He founded Aimclear®, a driven, integrated marketing agency dominant in customer acquisition, winner of 17 US Search Awards including 5X most recent Best Integrated Agency. Aimclear's differentiator is the balance of holistic brand-builds, PR, data, and integrated performance marketing. Credits include PayPal, Venmo, Uber, eBay, Airbnb, Dell, LinkedIn, Etsy, Gumtree, Eurail, Firestone, INC Magazine, Amazon, Famous Dave's, Martha Stewart Omni, Intel, Travelocity, Macy’s, GoDaddy, 3M, Siemens, Land's End, and many more. A fixture on the international conference circuit, Marty has appeared in front of hundreds of international search & social marketing conference audiences, from Jerusalem to Sydney.
Simon Wharton | BUSINESS STRATEGY DIRECTOR | PUSHON
Having led PushON for 12 years, In 2017 Simon transitioned from Managing Director to Business Strategy Director where he could apply his considerable experience in digital transformation to PushONs digital consultancy service. Simon has spent more than two decades operating within the digital sector, initially in a corporate environment, before becoming embroiled in the early days of the Manchester digital community. Alongside his business partner, Roy Wilding, he pivoted PushON out of an incarnation of a previous successful digital business. Steady planned growth has seen the business gain recognition as one of the North West’s leading eCommerce agencies. The business’ expertise in eCommerce development and its particular skill with online marketing has led to a raft of peer reviewed award wins throughout the North West, UK and Europe. Simon also has a reputation for “sticking his oar in” to drive the digital sector forward. He is a council member for Manchester Digital, lectures at local universities and was a founder of SASCon, the infamously expert digital marketing conference. He speaks at events, organises events and largely keeps himself busy both in the sector and in the community. He has four children available to keep him stressed and is the gofer for a local under 10s football team. When he finds the time to go out, you’ll most likely find him seeing a loud band somewhere.
Michelle Wilding Baker | Head of Digital and Content | Freesat
Michelle is a globally award-winning digital marketer who specialises in data-first customer acquisition (owned/paid/earned), SEO and content strategy. She graduated with First Class Honours in Communication Studies (Journalism) and is armed with more than a decade of marketing and editorial experience across international, SME and start-up brands in highly competitive FinTech, Insurance, Travel, Beauty, eCommerce and publishing industries. Now leading the digital marketing, eCommerce, editorial, content and social strategy remit at Freesat and consulting on a project-basis for Oh Mishy, she previously completed 2.5 years as Head of SEO & Content at The Telegraph Media Group where she hired and led the ‘Best Brand SEO Team’ of 2019. Michelle regularly judges industry marketing and eCommerce awards, guest speaks at events and co-organises the ‘Take It Offline' Digital Marketing Roundtable in London and Europe.