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.
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Judges
Lukas Adamec | FREELANCE SEM/PPC SPECIALIST
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.
Martin Calvert | Marketing Director | ICS-digital
Martin is Marketing Director at ICS-digital – Martin frequently speaks and writes about digital marketing best practice in highly regulated sectors defined by fierce competition, and hosts the ICS: Everything Digital podcast on Apple and Spotify. In awards judging, Martin draws on extensive client-side experience, his digital agency background and his time at ICS, which covers campaigns in 100+ languages and dozens of countries.
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.
Mary Foteinou | Paid Media Strategist
Mary Foteinou is a Digital Marketing expert with a strong B2C and B2B background. She has worked at many award-winning media agencies in the UK before moving client-side. Since 2021, Mary has joined the Global Digital Marketing team at Ericsson as a Paid Media Strategist, driving paid media innovation and best practices.
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.
Navah Hopkins | Vice President of Strategic Marketing | Adzooma
A veteran of the digital marketing industry and "Top 25 PPC Expert", she began as an SEO in 2008, transitioning to PPC in 2012. She manages the strategy and execution of paid media campaigns, as well as helping brands build relationships with profitable partners and customers. Throughout her career, Navah makes a point to give back and loves sharing lessons learned on the international speaking circuit as well as local universities. She is a frequent contributor to SEJ, SEMrush, and WordStream blogs/webinars. In 2019, she became a founding member of the Paid Search Association, a group dedicated to empowering the next generation of PPC practitioners, as well as serving as a resource for all practitioners to learn from and share with the community.
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.
Al Mullowney | Mobile Guest Ltd, Reportible | Founder
Al is currently the director for Canadian-based digital marketing firm, Mobile Guest. One of eastern Canada's largest digital marketing firms that specialize in paid media management. Al started his digital marketing career in 2001, building websites from scratch, optimizing them for search engines, and monetizing them through affiliate programs, Google adsense, and advertiser placements. Al has been a Google Partner since 2006 and has managed search, display, paid social, and programmatic campaigns for roughly 1000 different businesses across the globe. With a passion for holistic data analysis, Al is also founder of Reportible.com; a platform that allows marketers to easily create dashboards and analyze marketing metrics.
Rejoice Ojiaku | CO-FOUNDER, SEO MANAGER & CONTENT LEAD | B-DIGITALUK
Rejoice Ojiaku is an SEO Specialist & Content Strategist, as well as the Co-Founder of B-DigitalUK – a platform for showcasing and empowering black talent in the UK digital marketing scene. Her expertise lies in SEO, Diversity and inclusion, all bolstered by strong personal branding both online and offline.
Eyal Shnaides | User Acquisition Team Lead | Taboola
Eyal is a digital marketer with over seven years of experience in B2B advertising. Based in Tel Aviv, Eyal spearhead as User Acquisiton team Lead at Taboola. In this role he focuses on global sacle and PPC performance, improving and diversifying Taboola’s marketing machine, leading global product projects and coaching universal sales teams on the digital marketing world and it's wide potential.
Becky Simms | Founder & CEO | Reflect Digital
Becky has spent the last 15 years working in digital marketing, starting Reflect Digital in 2011, which is now a team of over 35 digital specialists. In 2021, 2022 and 2023 Becky was listed in the BIMA 100, a list of the top 100 people shaping the future of the digital industry. Becky’s passion for digital lies within understanding human behaviour and applying behavioural science to channels such as paid media. It is her belief that as marketers we can best achieve our goals by helping our customers and we can only truly help them if we understand their needs and can craft a strategy around this.
Pascal Skropke | CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER | Design-bestseller
In his position as CMO of design-bestseller, Pascal Skropke has been leading the strategic development of the Marketing, IT and UX/CX departments since 2018. He actively uses his previously experience in digital marketing and e-commerce to shape the brand of design-bestseller. Design-bestseller is one of Europes leading e-commerce companies for premium interior design. With a unique assortment and through expert and personal advice, design-bestseller also offers a unique special shopping experience online
Polly Vodenicharova | Digital Marketing Manager | Homes for Students
Polly is the Digital Marketing Manager for Homes for Students - the largest PBSA independent student accommodation provider in the UK & Ireland. She has a passion for all things digital, combined with 5 years of experience in content creation, social media & paid advertising. Polly tries to combine a creative worldview with analytical thinking and believes that the secret to cracking social media is the Triple T(test, tailor & track). Previous work includes agency experience within a variety of fields - from Fashion to Education; Professional Sports; Tech. Outside of the UK, she’s worked on EU-funded projects & international events. Her main personal goal is to inspire and empower women who are just entering the Digital field and prove that the one number that never matters is your age.
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.
Lukasz Zelezny | SEO Consultant | @
Lukasz Zelezny, UK Search Awards judge, Top10 UK Social Media influencer and former director of organic performance at uSwitch / Zoopla. Currently is working as an independent SEO Consultant helping in organic traffic acquisition, technical SEO and content marketing. Lukasz started his career in 2005 and has since been responsible for the organic performance of a number of companies including HomeAway, Thomson Reuters, The Digital Property Group, Fleetway Travel, uSwitch, Zoopla. Each year Lukasz is speaking at many SEO and social media conferences. He was a speaker at ClickZ Shanghai China, ClickZ Jakarta Indonesia, SiMGA Malta, SES London as well as Marketing Festival in Brno, Brighton SEO in Brighton and UnGagged in London. Every year he is actively participating in 10 to 20 events as an SEO/Social Media keynote speaker. Additionally, he organizes workshops and meetups where he is sharing tips around SEO, Social Media and Analytics.