Our Advisory Board

Mark E. Benson presently serves as a marketing consultant and most recently was Chief Marketing Officer for Key Bank USA, National Association's Champion Mortgage - a division of KeyCorp (Key).  During his tenure at Key, Mr. Benson rebranded a twenty-year-old company in 6 months, realized a 70% sales increase in 1 year with a 20% reduced marketing budget and guided the company from a regional to a national company with $2 billion in annual sales. Mr. Benson's experience includes twenty years of classical brand marketing and direct response marketing with a track record of providing successful integrated marketing programs and highly effective business strategies.

Mr. Benson's expertise includes all aspects of integrated marketing including advertising, marketing, public relations, Internet marketing, marketing communications, business development, product development and market research. Mr. Benson's various senior-level positions include President of Mark E. Benson & Associates, Inc., Executive Vice President, Marketing for the Economic Development Corporation in New York City and National Director of Marketing and Communications for the global financial services company DCI.  In addition, Mr. Benson serves on the Advisory Boards for The Advanced Marketing & Media Group, LLC and Open4Bid, Inc. Mr. Benson received a B.A. in Political Science from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Mr. Robert Lane is a senior finance and strategy executive, who has extensive experience in media and marketing research.  He was most recently the CFO at IAG Research, Inc., an advertising effectiveness research company that was acquired by the Nielsen Company in 2008.  Bob also served as CFO at Telephia, Inc., the leading information provider to the wireless industry,  and then served on its Board of Directors until it was sold to Nielsen in 2007.  Prior to this, Mr. Lane was the senior finance executive at Nielsen Media Research, which he joined in 1992.  (Nielsen Media Research, which went public in 1998, was acquired by VNU USA, Inc. in October 1999).  Bob is a graduate of Bishop's University and the Harvard Business School.

For almost 8 years, David was the Vice President of the User Experience and Design Team at Yahoo! and has been involved in almost every product and service Yahoo! has built in the U.S. and internationally. As an early employee of Yahoo!, he lived the startup life of working long, committed, and satisfying hours and embodied the "do what it takes" attitude required for success at a start up. In living the early years of Yahoo!, David came to intimately know the fast, low-budget, "take care of your users and listen to them" and "let the consumer decide" method of internet product development. Having worked on so many Yahoo! products, David also has a broad knowledge of effective business models on the Web.

David was also involved in the online advertising revolution at Yahoo!, where he helped manage, evangelize (both internally and externally), research and implement many new forms of interactive advertising while advancing creativity and quality in online ad campaigns. He also led the Rich Media Task Force at the Internet Advertising Bureau for 2 years to gain industry and agency acceptance of new interactive ad formats and methods.

Tom has spent 25 years in direct, database and online marketing. Prior to co-founding aCerno, recently acquired by Akamai, he held senior positions at aQuantive, Inc (General Manager of Avenue A and President of Atlas) and was part of the executive team that took the company public. Before aQuantive, Tom owned several advertising agencies, the most recent of which was acquired by Foote Cone Belding, a True North agency. As a result of the sale, he became Managing Director of Bozell Worldwide where he focused on international business development.

Tom was previously the Chairman of the IAB Associate Board and is actively involved in industry trade groups and events.