The must-attend event for PPC and Paid Social professionals is back in the US. Join the sharpest minds in digital advertising, connect with industry leaders, and master the latest strategies that will skyrocket your campaigns.
Hero Conf San Diego 2025 will feature exceptional speakers, incredible networking and unforgettable parties. All we’re missing is you.
Nikki Kuhlman has been deep in paid search since almost the start of the industry, starting in-house in 2002. She’s been at JumpFly since 2005 and is the Director of Search Strategy, handing Google, Microsoft and Yahoo accounts. She manages B2B and B2C clients across all industries. Ecommerce clients are a specialty; she started the Feed Management division at JumpFly in 2016 because she saw the need for companies to improve their data. She’s a big proponent of looking at a client’s overall marketing strategy, not just how her “piece” of the pie is performing.
She’s a certified Google Ads Shopping Guru, a Bing Champion (2019, 2018) and was nominated as a Bing Trailblazer of the Year in 2018. She was on the list of Top Most Influential PPCers of 2022 by Marketing O’Clock.
When not working, she’s on the board of the D300 Food Pantry, serving underprivileged children and their families in the D300 School District in Illinois, as well as on the board of New Friends and Neighbors of the Dundee Area, a philanthropic/social group for women. She’s an avid reader, can’t keep an indoor plant alive to save her life, and is a wife and mom to two semi-grown boys.
Luna Rocha is a search marketing professional specializing in pay-per-click (PPC). She has a reputation for growing ROI both in-house and in an agency setting. She is a Google Ads Professional and Microsoft Ads Accredited Professional.
-Contributor for Search Engine Land
-Featured PPCer for Official PPC Chat
-Board Member of Paid Search Association
Specialties: Search engine marketing; pay per click management and lead nurturing
Andrea Cruz Lopez is a Digital Marketing Manager at KoMarketing, where she leads and executes demand generation programs for clients. Andrea is responsible for driving and implementing SEM, Social Media, ABM, and content syndication campaigns on platforms including Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.
Beyond paid search and social platforms, Andrea is proficient in Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, various CRMs and has previous experience in operations and B2B purchasing.
Originally from Venezuela, Andrea holds a Masters in International Business from Hult International Business School and is fluent in Spanish, English and French.
Jeremy Krantz brings over 17 years of search experience having worked on a variety of verticals in both B2B and B2C, in-house and at an agency level. He’s worked with some of the biggest brands on a national and international level and presently serves as a Director of Paid Search over at Compound Growth Marketing, a B2B digital marketing agency.
When not working, Jeremy likes to spend his free time exploring the world of craft beer, cooking, going on adventures, watching movies, and spending quality time with his wife and young daughter.
Sam Tomlinson is the Vice President of Strategy & Analytics at Warschawski. With a background spanning business, data, and finance, Sam is a radically different kind of marketer – one with a singular focus on making businesses better.
This background, combined with a unique combination of analytics skills, performance marketing expertise, and deep understanding of the brand, allows him to challenge the status quo, see hidden opportunities, develop novel strategies and build scalable systems to capitalize on those opportunities.
Sam leads Warschawski’s award-winning Digital & Analytics teams in the development, execution, and optimization of integrated digital campaigns and measurement strategies. Sam has established a data-driven culture throughout the agency while delivering exceptional bottom-line growth for clients through the fusion of innovative digital strategies with robust, multi-channel marketing campaigns.
Since joining Warschawski, Sam has led successful marketing communications initiatives for many of the agency’s global, national and regional clients, including Dole Packaged Foods, Biologics Consulting, Hogan Lovells, Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, KeyW, Janet, Janet & Suggs, Kabateck LLP, JMT, WSP, Sagamore Ventures, Sagamore Spirit and numerous others.
A digital native, deep generalist, and passionate innovator, Sam has a unique ability to connect seemingly disparate concepts in novel ways. He brings an unparalleled understanding of the digital ecosystem and how each component within that ecosystem can work together to create an exceptional outcome. His experience with specific platforms, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, YouTube, Programmatic/DSPs, and Amazon, and knowledge of strategic and tactical methods give him the ability to craft comprehensive strategies, execute them flawlessly and optimize them relentlessly across dozens of channels. This approach has led to successful outcomes for clients with a wide variety of industries and business models, including, B2B, B2C, B2G, DTC, SaaS, lead generation, and more.
As a thought leader and pioneer in the digital and data marketing spaces, Sam is frequently sought out for comment and expertise. He is regularly invited to speak at major regional, national, and international conferences, including HeroConf, SMX, PRSA ICON, Search Marketing Summit (AU), AMEC & The Digital Analytics Association, among others. He is regularly quoted by prominent national, regional, and industry publications.
Sam is a member of the Executive Education faculty at the renowned Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, an adjunct instructor at Georgetown University and Cabrini University, and a guest lecturer at New York University. Sam was named one of the “Marketers of Tomorrow” by Target Marketing, a Maryland Daily Record 2020 VIP List winner one of the Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts by PPC Hero.
Brett is a Senior Paid Search Specialist at Zeta Global, with over 9 years of experience in the Digital Marketing space working with B2B and B2C companies, in a variety of verticals. He is a Silver Google Ads Product Expert who loves to help others out where possible. His goal is to deliver both consumers and clients the best experiences possible.”
Duane is the Founder and Head of Strategy at TakeSomeRisk.com. Duane has lived in 6 cities across 3 continents while working for brands like ASOS, Birdies, Telstra, Wealthbar, Jack Wills, and WooCommerce. He now lives in Montreal, Canada helping brands grow through data, CRO and PPC marketing across search & social ad platforms.
In his current role as Head of Agency at Facebook, Jason partners with agencies to help them navigate the digital landscape and serves as a catalyst for growth and transformation. He has a deep digital background spanning 20 years of extensive experience bringing integrated, holistic solutions to clients. Prior to joining Facebook, he was the SVP of Performance Marketing at Mediavest, where he led the delivery of performance media solutions, including SEM, SEO, Paid Social, and eCommerce for clients such as P&G, Honda, Sprint, Coca-Cola and Citibank. Prior to Mediavest, he spent 9 years at Microsoft Advertising, flirted with traditional media, and cut his teeth in management consulting. He received a B.S. from MIT, an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business and is passionate about giving back, currently serving on the board of directors of the New Jersey Ballet.
Kirk is the owner of ZATO, his Paid Search micro-agency, and has been working in Digital Marketing since 2009. He has been named one of the Top 25 Most Influential PPCers by PPC Hero the past 5 years, and is known for his Ecommerce PPC articles across various industry publications. Pre-COVID, he was an international conference speaker presenting on all things Paid Search (especially Shopping Ads), around the world but now sticks to podcasts and online conferences to share his latest tips on Google Shopping Ads. Kirk currently resides in Billings, MT with his wife, 5 children, books, the occasional mountain hike, and little sleep.
Since establishing AJPR in 1998, Motoko Hunt has been providing online marketing services to various companies around the world. Her extensive knowledge of Asia and Japanese markets proves to be highly valuable as her consulting services have made a significant impact on global marketing campaigns for some of the world’s most popular multinational brands. Besides being published in industry websites and printed media, Motoko also serves on several search awards’ judging panel, and is a frequent speaker at global search marketing conferences, giving seminars and training about topics on International Search Marketing
Christi is the Head of Evangelism for Bing at Microsoft and is on the Board of Directors for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and the University of Idaho School of Business. For over a decade Christi has led in-house Digital Marketing teams at Microsoft, Expedia, Harry & David, and agency teams at Pointmarc and Point It. She is passionate about search marketing and has spent her career helping businesses solve their marketing challenges and goals through studying and analyzing data to develop actionable insights and strategies. Christi has been recognized by PPC Hero and her peers as one of the top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts for the past 5 consecutive years. Christi is a recognized keynote speaker across the globe at events such as AdWeek, Mumbrella, DMEXCO, SMX, and the Digital Summit Series. She also writes for Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and has been published on HuffingtonPost, Venture Beat, Forbes, AdAge and MarketingProfs. When she isn’t writing or speaking you can find her napping with her daughter Adelinde (born in April), or literally jumping through hoops and chasing her 3-year-old, Roy, or spending time with her husband Jason.
As Ads Product Liaison I help answer questions about how Google ads products & policies work and bring marketers’ insights & perspectives back to the teams working on them. You can find me engaging regularly with marketers from @AdsLiaison on Twitter.
Former Editor-in-Chief Search Engine Land, Marketing Land. Ginny Marvin is a well-known expert in digital advertising and marketing, writing about news and trends in the sector. She is a frequent conference speaker and been quoted in The New York Times, Business Insider, Washington Post, among other publications and appeared on Reply All and NPR’s Marketplace Tech and All Things Considered.
Purna Virji is a globally recognized content strategist and best-selling author of the multiple-award winning book High-Impact Content Marketing. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she is currently the Principal Consultant, Content Solutions at LinkedIn. She previously led global learning and thought leadership programs for Microsoft and is also an award-winning former journalist. A regular top-rated international keynote speaker, she has been featured in publications including The Drum, TechCrunch+, TNW, Marketing Land and Adweek. She has been recognized as an Adweek Young Influential, the Search Personality of the Year by the US Search Awards and the most influential PPC Expert in the world by PPC Hero. Virji is also an Honored Listee on the Marquis Who’s Who 2023 list.
Voted among the World’s 50 most influential PPC experts, he is a founding member of Paid Search Association and Google Ads Premium Partner for Italy. He contributed to several PPC industry blogs and spoke at least once in all major international SEM events. In 2012 he created ADworld Experience, now the largest PPC-Cases-Only event in the World. He works as PPC & CRO freelance professional, patented in US a Google Ads optimization methodology and wrote “Agile Google Ads” (the Italian GAds best selling book ever).
Navah Hopkins is Vice President of Strategic Marketing at AdZooma. She began working in digital marketing in 2008, transitioning from SEO to paid search in 2012. Since that time, she’s worked with SMBs and the agencies who serve them across the globe, helping them unlock the full potential of their budgets, as well as turn PPC into a scalable part of their organizations.
When she’s not working with clients, she shares lessons learned through international conferences including SMX, PubCon, Search Marketing Summit, Google customer events, as well as local workshops. She was named one of the top 25 most influential PPC marketers and likes to pay it forward by mentoring future marketers at local universities.
When she’s not empowering customers or speaking, Navah loves gaming with her husband and playing with her rescue dog, HK-47 (Star Wars), and Ocicat, Chinook. Connect with her on Twitter @navahf and follow #ppcpuppy on Instagram for PPC tips from HK.
Melissa Mackey is Director of Paid Search at Compound Growth Marketing. A veteran PPC marketer, she helps clients achieve maximum ROI from paid search. Mackey contributes regularly to several industry publications, writing on PPC strategy. Mackey has spoken at industry conferences such as SMX Advanced, SMX Next and HeroConf.
Throughout her career, her achievements include the evaluation and implementation of paid search campaigns for all types of advertisers, as well as execution and analysis of ad copy and landing page strategy.
Mackey holds a Dual BA from Michigan State University and a Master’s of Management from Aquinas College. She lives in East Lansing, Michigan with her husband and the empty bedrooms of her two grown-and-flown children.
Lisa Raehsler is a search engine marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) strategist, nationally recognized speaker, and columnist for industry leading publications. As the founder and principal strategist at BigClickCo.com, she helps companies and agencies of all sizes to integrate PPC advertising into online media programs for brand promotion, demand generation, and customer acquisition. Lisa has led hundreds of paid advertising accounts for search engines (Google Ads and Microsoft Ads), mobile, display, retargeting, and social media ad campaigns. Her experience spans twenty years and includes working with national brands at agencies and at the enterprise level at Thomson Reuters.
Lisa has spoken about PPC, mobile, retargeting and other online marketing topics at industry conferences, training events, podcasts, and webinars alongside her industry columns. She is a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award for Bing Ads PPC.
John Lee is a digital advertising professional with experience in PPC, display advertising, social advertising, SEO, and analytics. At Microsoft, John is the Head of Evangelism for Search and Advertising. He has been in the digital advertising industry since 2006 working with Hanapin Marketing, Wordstream, and as co-owner of Clix Marketing.
John is a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal, The SEM Post, Acquisio Blog, Clix Marketing Blog, Search Engine Watch and was instrumental in the creation and launch of popular paid search advertising blog PPC Hero. In addition to his writing, John has been a speaker at SMX, PubCon, SocialPro, SES, ClickZ Live, HeroConf, Acquisio User Summit, State of Search, MN Search Summit, Ticket Summit and Zenith Conference.
(Fred) Vallaeys is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, author and leading influencer in pay-per-click search marketing. One of Google’s first 500 employees, Fred helped pioneer PPC marketing as the company’s first AdWords Evangelist. Today he serves as Co-Founding CEO of Optmyzr, a leading and award-winning PPC management software system.
Fred and his team at Optmyrz continue to shape and influence PPC marketing through deep automation, driven by the company’s advancement in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Optmyzr has evolved to become the PPC Expert’s Toolkit, empowering PPC pros to eliminate barriers in their search marketing programs and become much more strategic as effective marketers.
Optmyzr continues to expand its capabilities for Google Ads and Bing Ads – and expanding to other areas related to search marketing and eCommerce.
A sought-after industry thought leader, Fred conducts in-depth sessions and motivational keynotes at leading conferences around the world. He is also a prolific blogger and contributor to leading marketing and technology publications, and he is routinely called upon by journalists, writers and podcasters for his industry insight and vision.
His best-selling online advertising book, Digital Marketing in an AI World, provides his first-hand historical view of PPC marketing and critical insight for digital marketers and agency executives who are forging their own paths in an increasingly automated segment of marketing.
Fred and the team at Optmyzr are committed to driving new innovation and advancements to elevate PPC’s prominence in marketing overall. With operations on 4 continents, Optmyzr routinely earns industry accolades, including its most recent award for Best PPC Management Suite during the 2018 US Search Awards.
Fred’s specialties include: Tech automation, SaaS software development, public speaking, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, mobile advertising, social marketing, content marketing, product management for web applications, product management for android and iOS applications, media appearances
Outside of his life as marketing/tech pioneer, Fred focuses much of his attention on his family and photography in his adopted hometown in Silicon Valley.
Brad Geddes has been involved in PPC since 1998. He is a co-founder of AdAlysis, a PPC recommendation engine. Brad is the author of Advanced Google AdWords, the most advanced book ever written about Google’s advertising program.
Brad has worked with companies that manage tens of thousands of small PPC accounts and other companies that spend millions on marketing each month. His experience ranges from owning his own agency to managing a boutique agency, to overseeing programs that were official resellers of Google and Microsoft. Some brands he has worked with include Amazon, Yahoo, Thomson Reuters, Salesforce, Google, FindLaw, and the Washington Post.
One of his trademarks has been demystifying the complicated aspects of SEM. Not one to hold secrets, Brad prefers to educate marketers on the various aspects of crafting successful marketing campaigns to ensure success for all parties involved.
AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn Ads pro who founded B2Linked.com, a LinkedIn Ads-specific ad agency, in 2014. As official LinkedIn partners, they manage among the world’s most sophisticated advertising accounts worldwide. He’s a ginger & triathlete. He & his wife live in Utah, with their 4 kids, and his company car is a wicked-fast gokart.
Aaron has been in digital for over a decade, starting when he was “given the keys to the car”, managing Paid Search for DuPont as a college junior. From there he took his career to the agency track – working at GSI Commerce in the Philly suburbs (eventually an exit when sold to eBay), growing Seer Interactive’s SEM team 5x before landing at Tinuiti (FKA Elite SEM). Acting as the 600-person agency’s first group director, he leads a team of 60+ SEM professionals up and down the east coast, working with some of the most recognizable brands in the world.
He’s worked in verticals ranging from B2C services, health systems and home care, as well as to enterprise ecommerce & SaaS. Over the course of his career, Aaron has managed internship programs, led hiring initiatives, consulted with agencies across the industry and built teams of from the ground up. He estimates he’s handled well over a billion dollars in media over the years, all focused on the big picture of businesses rather than looking at them in a vacuum. He’s an internationally recognized speaker, an adjunct at University of Vermont + Drexel, a mentor to many and a mediocre (but frequent) golfer.
Mike Freedman has enjoyed a successful career in the field of search marketing for more than two decades. He’s worked in client-side and agency-side paid search advertising and also for two niche paid search advertising software platforms.
Mike also has more than a decade of experience in the non-profit world. He helped develop and managed two national non-profit healthcare organizations, including a trade association and a certifying board. Mike worked for several years as director of communications for the American Heart Association in the Greater Miami area.
He works as the Senior Search Marketing Manager at Ultimate Medical Academy, a dynamic educational institution committed to equipping and empowering students to excel in healthcare careers.
Lisa Maier is the founder and CEO of DirectiveGroup, a digital marketing agency that specializes in the development of high-converting websites, digital marketing strategies including primary research, marketing artificial intelligence solutions, paid digital advertising, search engine optimization, conversion optimization, social media marketing and content-based marketing.
Ms. Maier’s background also includes top-tier business strategy consulting for Fortune 50 companies delving into technology-based offerings, several years helping small technology companies develop strategies and executable tactics to traverse the chasm from good products to nationally scaled businesses, particularly making use of online marketing and media programs. Ms. Maier’s educational background includes undergraduate degrees in Economics and Sociology from Florida’s New College, and a dual Wharton MBA in Business Strategy and Information Strategies, Systems & Economics.
David is Owner and CEO of digital advertising agency FMB Media, and one of the world’s best-known experts in online advertising. A former Apple Computer executive and serial entrepreneur, David’s career has been dedicated to helping companies of all sizes maximize revenue and profit.
His two books on PPC advertising have helped train a generation of marketers. His articles on PPC advertising have been published in The SEM Post, MediaPost, Search Engine Watch, and Search Engine Land. He hosts a biweekly podcast called PPC Rockstars, produced by Webmaster Radio and distributed by iTunes and other major outlets.
David is a frequent speaker at Search and Advertising industry events like SMX, Ungagged and Pubcon. He was recently judged one of the top 50 PPC experts worldwide by PPC Hero.