Our Board

Matt Rowley

CEO, Pedestrian Group / IAB Australia Chair

Pedestrian Group is Australia’s leading youth publisher and the home of PEDESTRIAN.TV, Business Insider, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Kotaku, Popsugar, Amex Openair Cinemas and Tinder. It is wholly owned by Australia’s largest and most diverse media company, Nine Entertainment.

Matt has diverse experience in Media, having been a global marketer before running and owning creative agencies in London. After returning to Australia in 2013 he held the roles of Chief Revenue Officer for Fairfax Media and Sales Director, Publishing for Nine Entertainment, before taking the helm at Pedestrian Group in 2019.

Vanya Mariani

Commercial Director (Sales & Customer Solutions), Carsales / IAB Australia Deputy Chair

An experienced commercial leader in the digital advertising industry. Vanya has been with the Carsales business since 2009 and is dedicated to providing her clients with market leading ideas and service. Vanya was elected Deputy Chair of IAB Australia in 2023. 

Sarah Myers

General Manager, Audience & Marketing, REA Group

Sarah is a seasoned marketing professional with 20+ years’ experience building and expanding well-known Australian brands. She has a particular focus on brand and product storytelling and is passionate about leading high performing teams.  Sarah joined REA Group in 2019, after holding senior marketing positions, including Group Director of Marketing, at Domain. Sarah has spent much of her career in digital media and led B2C and B2B marketing strategies across Fairfax Media.

At REA Group, Sarah leads a team of marketing specialists across brand and performance, lifecycle marketing, audience and personalisation, and analytics. She was recognised in CMO50 list in 2022.

Paul Blackburn

Director Commercial Data, Video and Product, News Corp Australia

Paul is senior digital media executive with 20+ years of industry experience leading digital strategy, product, and developing specialist commercial teams and has been with News Corp for ten years. Paul is a proven leader that has led organizational change and digital transformation in an evolving media landscape to deliver results through innovation.

Mason Rook

Commercial Director, The Guardian Australia

Mason is a driven business leader with over 15 years of experience in senior roles within some of Australia’s most iconic media organisations such as The Guardian, ARN, Mi9/ninemsn, Nine, Daily Mail & Seven Network. Mason is passionate about creating high performance teams who embrace individuality, unlocking their potential through mentoring, encouragement & a strong leadership vision. In his current role Mason leads the strategy, sales, brand funded content, Guardian labs, programmatic, audience insights and research, ad operations & design teams

Caroline Oates

Head of YouTube, Deals & Programmatic Sales, Google

With 20+ years experience across media and tech, Caroline currently leads the go-to-market, strategy and sales specialist teams for YouTube and DV360 in AUNZ. Prior to this she led Google Australia’s FMCG ads business with her role focused on helping clients continue to build strong brands and engage their customers as consumer behaviour evolved. Caroline started her career in the UK in a start-up before moving to News UK where she led the Insight & Strategic Planning function.

John McNerney

John McNerney, Snr Director of Platforms, Yahoo APAC

John is an experienced digital advertising expert who has spent the last 15 years immersed in the world of advertising data and technology. In his current role he looks after the technology underpinning Yahoo’s suite of products across APAC, working to bring innovative and impactful solutions to life for blue-chip clients in the region. John has been on various Councils with the IAB over the past 9 years.

Carolyn Bollaci

Head of Media, Meta

Carolyn is the Head of Media at Facebook Australia where she is responsible for partnering with agencies to grow their businesses, achieve results for clients and help scale education across the Facebook family of apps. Carolyn was featured on the 2015, & 2020 B&T Women in Media Power List and won the B&T Women in Technology award in 2020.

Carolyn has had 15+ years in the digital space on three continents and multiple cities (Boston, San Francisco, Sydney, London and New York.) She is an active member of the Australian digital community, and as one of the founding members of the IAB Australia AdTech Council, she helps define policies and standards that benefit the greater industry as a whole. Bollaci works closely with leading brands and agencies in the region and has been involved with some of the most innovative digital advertising campaigns across Asia.

 

Rebecca Darley

CMO, Domain

Bec is responsible for leading the marketing function at Domain, this includes consumer and trade marketing, creative, digital, content, publishing, communications and PR. She was previously responsible for digital transformation strategy at CommSec and prior to that she has held senior marketing roles at Westpac, St George, Ikea and Vodafone. 

Adele Wieser

Regional Managing Director, Index Exchange

Adele has over 12+ years digital experience and 8+ years in programmatic, and has secured a reputation as one of the top authorities on programmatic media trading in Australia and the broader APAC region. Adele got her first taste of the power of technology in the digital ecosystem straight out of university, optimising the performance campaigns for advertisers at two market leading publishers in Australia. For Adele, technology has allowed her to develop a childhood love of solving puzzles into a career focused on tackling complex issues for digital media owners and buyers. Making the transition into the technology space in early 2012, Adele furthered her expertise in programmatic by working with exchange technology and began consulting for CoLab Media Consulting in 2016 before her appointment as Country Manager at Index Exchange in 2017. As one of the first employees in APAC, she was tasked with growing Index’s footprint by building a team and educating publishers and buyers on the promise of programmatic media. In 2019, Adele was appointed as Regional Managing Director and is responsible for overseeing the company’s operations, strategic direction and future growth opportunities for the APAC region.

Andrew Brain

Director, Audience Intelligence, Seven West Media

Andrew Brain is the Director of Audience Intelligence at Seven West Media – one of Australia’s most prominent media companies with a market-leading presence in content production across broadcast television, publishing and digital.