Speakers

James Burke

Consultant
Kantar Media

James has worked on both sides of the Kantar Media constituents having spent 3 years at BMRB before moving to TNS in March 2008. James is a specialist in all types of media research, working for a wide range of clients. His role involves delivering insight across advertising, branding, media consumption and behaviour.

His project work includes research into in-game advertising looking at the impact on both the brand and gamer.

Before starting his career in market research James completed an MSc at the University of Wales, Bangor in Psychological Research specialising in Experimental Consumer Psychology.

Reuben Steiger

CEO
Millions of Us

Reuben Steiger is the CEO of Millions of Us, a company dedicated to helping businesses understand and harness the power of virtual worlds and online communities.

Prior to founding Millions of Us, Steiger was the Evangelist for Linden Lab, creators of the 3-D virtual world Second Life. In that role, he was responsible for business development efforts and bringing the first wave of corporations and commercial developers into Second Life.

Until 2002, he was Chief Development Officer at OVEN Digital, where he helped build that company into the world's largest privately-owned Internet consultancy with 11 offices and 350 employees worldwide.

Steiger holds a BA in English Literature from Brown University and lives in Marin County with his wife and two young children.

Chris James

Regional Sales Manager EMEA
Massive Inc. - Microsoft

Chris James, joined Microsoft in July 2007 as an Account Executive for Massive and has risen to the role Regional Sales Manager For EMEA.

Chris James is responsible for growing advertising revenue across EMEA for Massive, the rapidly expanding in-game advertising product that sits within Microsoft Advertising. This far reaching role involves developing and building Massive’s own sales footprint as well as integrating with Microsoft Advertising’s extensive global sales network.

Before joining Microsoft Chris James the UK Sales Manager for in-game advertising company IGA Worldwide. His primary responsibility was for educating the advertising community about in-game advertising and driving revenue into this new and exciting channel. Clients included Paramount, Intel, Universal Pictures, Burger King, and Motorola.

Prior to joining the nascent in-game advertising sector Chris James spent ten years at Dennis Publishing as firstly, Advertising Manager of Auto Express magazine where he was responsible for the sales team and driving revenues in excess of £5million from leading clients and media agencies, and secondly Advertising Director of Men’s Fitness, where he was responsible for successfully re launching the magazine.

James Salins

Sales Director
IGA Worldwide

James started his advertising career with Dentsu Y&R in Hong Kong before moving to Dubai to handle Toyota/Lexus and Ikea accounts and then to the Gulf region for Disney and Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

When James moved back to Britain he joined Boomerang Media before moving to Avanti Screenmedia as Head of Sales in 2004. He oversaw the expansion of the shopping mall digital screen network and bar screen network and a number of successful retail digital screen offerings.

In 2008, having flirted with moving to a more traditional on-line company on a few occasions but not taken the plunge, IGA and In-Game advertising seemed the ideal mix of forward thinking media proposition and emerging platform. Since his time at IGA he has been instrumental in reviewing and building the in-game offering to agencies and clients alike. He has taken a very active role educating both digital departments and planning teams as to how and why gaming should form part of a media schedule. James has also been active in speaking about In-Game at the likes of Adtech and various IAB forums.

Bella Acharya

Director Entertainment and Devices Advertising Business Group
Microsoft

As the Director of International Ad Sales for Xbox and Casual Gaming, Ms. Acharya oversees Microsoft’s advertising sales force and drives market outreach efforts throughout all International markets outside of the US including EMEA, Americas and Asia-Pacific.

A seasoned executive with eight years of media sales experience, Acharya joined the Entertainment and Devices (E&D) division in 2001, the year of the initial Xbox release. She ran the US casual gaming ad sales team and her products included MSN Games and Messenger Games prior to expanding her team’s product suite to include Xbox. Before joining the E&D team, Acharya successfully worked within different product groups at Microsoft including MS-DOS, Windows 95 & WindowsMedia.com with a variety of roles including International Producer for MSN 2.0. By working closely with Microsoft product groups and sales teams, Acharya strives to cultivate this emerging space through evangelization and market based solutions designed to meet the needs of Fortune 500 marketers.

Acharya recently moved to London with her husband and daughter to launch the International sales team and accelerate growth within EMEA. She received an MIS degree from the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL and holds a United States Patent from a concept she drove on WindowsMedia.com.