Board of Advisors

Ira Carlin

Ira Carlin has 36 years of top-level media and new media management and strategic thinking experience with some of the world's largest agencies and clients. Most recently, he was Chairman-International of Interpublic's MAGNA Global Worldwide, a groundbreaking operation designed to focus and enhance the marketplace leverage of the Interpublic media operations, 'Initiative' and 'Universal McCann'. Earlier, Carlin was Chairman and CEO of Universal McCann and EVP and Worldwide Media Director prior to the establishment of UM, which was the $15 billion media arm of McCann-Erickson Worldwide, a leading multinational advertising agency network spanning over 130 countries around the world. He was also Chairman of Thunderhouse, IPG's first effort in Global online advertising and media operations. Carlin was a primary architect of McCann-Erickson's 1987 sponsorship of the MIT Media Lab, and served as a member of the Lab's News in the Future executive committee during the '90's.

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Robin Cooper

Robin Cooper is Vice President, Advertising and Business Development for Kelley Blue Book, where she is responsible for all OEM business relationships with the leading auto publisher, including all national and regional advertising, lead generation and business development. Since the beginning of Cooper's tenure in 2001, Kelley's ad revenue has increased over five-fold. Before Kelley, Cooper was with DoubleClick, joining the company as director of business development, responsible for developing strategic partnerships with high-profile, highly-branded sites. She was then named publisher of automotive, and ultimately group publisher of four categories — Automotive, Women, Health and Ecommerce - where she was responsible for all advertising and business development in these key areas.

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Michael Kelly

Mike Kelly served as President of AOL Media Networks from February 2004 until September 2007 and was responsible for AOL's global advertising business, including revenues, product and platform development, and media strategy for all of AOL's properties, as well as its Advertising.com network. Since creating the Media Networks organization, revenues grew from $600 million in 2003 to over $2.1 Billion in just 3 years. Also notable during Mr. Kelly's tenure was the acquisition of Advertising.Com in 2004, the negotiation of a multi-year, multi-billion dollar contract with Google in 2005, the development of AOL's network strategy and other acquisitions (such as TACODA, Lightningcast and Third Screen Media) as well as the global expansion of Ad.com to 11 countries.

Before that, he was President of Global Marketing at Time Warner and oversaw the company's group working with partners to develop cross-platform marketing solutions to take advantage of Time Warner's businesses. Mr. Kelly was the founder and CEO of American Town Network (ATN), an interactive media company that develops and manages hometown intranets in 90 communities in the Northeast and cited by Brandweek as the most comprehensive community information resource in the United States. Before establishing ATN, he worked in sales at the Chicago Tribune and in 1983 joined Fortune as a sales representative. A member of Entertainment Weekly's launch team, he later became the magazine's Vice President and Publisher. Mr. Kelly serves on the board of Eyeblaster, the American Advertising Federation, as well as Professionals in Advertising PAC and American Town Network.

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Scot McLernon

Scot McLernon is President of the Upstream Group, a consultancy he co-founded in 2007. Over the last 12 years, McLernon has built and led three different and very successful web advertising sales teams, including CBS Interactive. His sales teams have frequently been cited by Forrester for highest revenue per salesperson, and for four years in a row his CBS MarketWatch team won "best business and finance site to advertise with" and have won the acclaimed ASPY award as Best Overall Sales Team on the web. McLernon entered the business in 1995, selling some of the web's initial banners and interactive "booths" for the web's first online and offline trade show titled "Web Innovation." He's been branded a pioneer, an innovator, and, from time to time, a maverick. He's an active board member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a founding member of the Online Publishers Association (OPA), a founding Director of the Bay Area Interactive Group (BIG) and a founder of the Seller's Forum, where twice a year over 30 of the top brands sales VPs share and work out industry issues for a day in an open, moderated forum.

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