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.
Become a Judge Previous Judges
Judges
Lukas Adamec
Lukas Adamec has been working within Paid Digital for 11+ years, during which he transitioned from an employee to a freelancer & CEO of Abadam Marketing. In the last 5 years Lukas has focused on Consultancy - working with established agencies to deliver client growth. His focus is particularly on international paid opportunities, from Google to Yandex, from Naver to Baidu, from Yahoo JP to Seznam. Lukas is a firm believer in knowledge sharing and enjoys discussing experiences with established online marketers as well as providing training to new colleagues. During his time off, Lukas recharges his energy by being disconnected from online influences and instead spends his time on wildlife photography.
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.
Jim Banks | CEO | Spades Media
Jim has been a paid media practitioner since 1999. He predates Google Adwords, that's how long he has been doing paid media. Widely regarded as one of the pioneers of paid search he's worked agency side, client side, as a consultant and on internal projects. Since 2012 he has been the CEO of Spades Media, a growth agency that works with ecommerce businesses looking for rapid growth. A frequent judge at various Don't Panic Events awards, including UK Search, European Search, UK Paid Media and returning again to be a judge for the European Paid Media Awards. Jim enjoys challenging the validity of the award entries and looks for the award worthy expertise in the paid media community.
Ellie England | Commercial 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 6 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.
Richard Gregory | Co-Founder | AgencyNXD
Richard is co-founder of AgencyNXD as well as an advisor and NXD to multiple tech firms and agencies, including Adzooma, Fluid Digitial and Ruler Analytics. Heralding from “Silicon Ramsbottom” he is an ardent supporter of the digital and tech industry in the North of England. Previously, Richard was the managing director of digital agency Latitude, director of Tech North and co-founder of SAScon.
Veronika Höller | Global Senior SEO Manager | CompuGroup Medical
Veronika is a Global Senior SEO-Manager and has worked in SEO and PPC marketing for over 14 years. She started as a copywriter and PPC Manager in a little Ads Agency. She has continuously developed herself further into the direction of SEO. Over the years, she has worked as a digital marketing manager in agencies and international companies, including CompuGroup where she is now. International SEO and PPC Strategies are Top of her priority list. She views SEO as a whole puzzle and not just individual sub-areas, hence why she trained herself in all areas – content, technology, PPC, SMM and UX. Today she spreads her knowledge as a speaker on the stages of international digital marketing conferences such as BrightonSEO, SMX advanced, International Search Summit etc. For her all digital marketing channels have to be united to get the best of your website.
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.
Krzysztof Marzec | CEO | Deva Group
Head of 300+ clients agency with 16+ years of SEM experience. One of the top Google Ads & Analytics Trainers in Poland. Selected by Google for Google Partners Academy project and Big6 project. Certified in both Google Ads and Google Analytics as an individual professional. 7+ years of experience in one of Poland's largest sites - Interia.pl (Head of SEO). Lecturer at Jagiellonian University, AGH University of Science and Technology, and the Tischner European University. Speaker at dozens of conferences recently won 1st place at SEO and 1st place at SEM days at largest polish conference I love marketing. Founder and organizer of semKRK, BarCamp gathering up to 500 participants of the SEM industry.
Rejoice Ojiaku | CO-FOUNDER, SEO MANAGER & CONTENT LEAD | B-DIGITALUK
Rejoice has worked within digital marketing (SEO) for 4+ years. After finishing her master’s degree in marketing at The University of Manchester, she started her journey as a Junior SEO Executive and is now an SEO Manager as well as the Co-Founder & Content Lead for B-DigitalUK. She specialises in Content SEO and she has spoken at BrightonSEO, Whitespark Local Search Summit as well as participated in webinars for FounderVine, Majestic, Noisy Little Monkey etc. Additionally, she is also an Award-Winning Diversity & Inclusion Advocate as she is passionate about Diversity & Inclusion within the workplace to ensure the perspective and struggles of Black people are heard.
Marty Weintraub | FOUNDER, SPEAKER, AUTHOR, EU SEARCH AWARDS JUDGE, INC. COLUMNIST | 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.