Idil Cakim is the Senior Vice President, Head of Research and Insights of Audacy. Audacy is a leading multi-platform audio content and entertainment company with the country’s best collection of local music, news and sports brands, a premium podcast creator, major event producer, and digital innovator. Audacy engages 200 million consumers each month, bringing people together around audio content that matters to them.

In this role, Cakim leads the company’s business to business strategy and audio insights practice, with a focus on building perspectives, ideas, and client strategies.

Cakim has devised marketing and communication strategies for Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations for more than 15 years. Prior to joining Audacy (then Entercom) in 2020, she served as Vice President of Media Analytics Consulting for Nielsen, where she led custom media analytics projects for advertisers across various sectors. Cakim played an integral role in transferring big data from metered television, digital and radio panels into meaningful business assets for brands across the U.S., Japan and China. She also supported clients in achieving their objectives by advising on advertising efficiency based on media effectiveness, optimization, and targeting exercises. Other previous roles include Vice President of Client Development for NM Incite – a Nielsen and McKinsey company – and Senior Vice President of Interactive Media for Golin.

Cakim is the author of the book “Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing: Online Strategies to Identify Influencers, Craft Stories and Draw Customers (Wiley),” as well as numerous industry briefs and articles on digital communications. She has also served as a public speaker on marketing and technology trends and has been widely quoted in trade journals and newspapers such as The New York Times, CNet News, CBS Market Watch, The Financial Times and others. In 2010, she was named Digital Communicator of the Year by PRNews. She also serves on the Ad Council’s Research Committee and is a member of the World Future Society.

Cakim earned a Master of Arts degree in communication from the Annenberg School at University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Bryn Mawr College.

Erik Lundberg is ArtsAI’s Chief Revenue Officer, overseeing sales, partnerships, and account development.  A 25-year industry veteran, Lundberg was a Charter Member of the IAB.

He is an industry innovator, having developed the first interactive audio ads on the Internet using RealAudio technology for Sony, co-founding the Professional Gamers League (PGL), and initiating one of the first five search engine keyword ad buys online.

Lundberg has a proven track record of driving rapid business growth and new product adoption. He has led ArtsAI’s significant growth, resulting in the company being named the fastest growing private ad technology company in America by Inc. Magazine.  He also drove rapid growth at Kleiner Perkins funded pogo.com (acquired by EA), as well as at NativeX (acquired by Mobvista), and founded the AddRev agency.  Lundberg graduated from Middlebury College with a double major.

Hetal Patel leads the Corporate & Consumer Insights team providing solutions for iHeartMedia that have transformed the media landscape & iHeartMedia’s go-to-market offerings.


In her role as the leader of the SmartAudio Intelligence Insights practice, she empowers 160 local markets and C-suite with data-driven stories that drive business outcomes across iHeartMedia’s multi-platform assets including radio, podcasts, digital and streaming audio.
She is the point person for all the data stories for the SEC, investor and analyst day presentations which lead up to iHeartMedia’s financial restructuring and IPO initiative.
Hetal’s insights drive iHeartMedia’s podcast deals such as Shonda Rimes, Hillary Clinton and Will Ferrell.


Most recently, Hetal’s analysis of the 2020 business and cultural landscape played a pivotal role in 2 product launches during the COVID pandemic and current social climate:

1. Black Information Network: first and only 24/7 all news audio service providing trusted coverage with a Black voice.
2. iHeartMedia’s LivingRoom Concert: first of its kind virtual event that was one of the top-rated entertainments telecast in 2020.

Among her accolades, she was featured in 12 of NYC tech’s leaders to know in 2019 by Built in NYC. Hetal supports charities including Indo Eye Care, Sakhi for South Asian women that provide humanitarian aid in villages of India and Africa.

As a working mother and immigrant, she understands the power of a diverse and inclusive environment and mentors students in the audio/marketing fields. Patel was enrolled in a PhD program for Consumer Psychology at University of North Carolina. She likes to pair her love of traveling with Insta-worthy moments, cooking Indian food and Bollywood dancing in her spare time.

Trent is a data driven marketer. He’s launched and scaled many offline channels. Recently, Trent has scaled Rocket Money’s audio program. Growing spend by 65% while increasing ROAS by 2x making it a top 10 spending podcast advertiser. He loves the industry and is an avid podcast listener.

Krystina is the founder of the offline growth marketing practice at Right Side Up, where she has built a team of highly specialized consultants that partner with high growth tech companies to diversify their marketing mix and stand offline channels up in-house.

Krystina’s marketing expertise spans across 15 years from being an early master of digital, paid search and display to applying digital lessons (and foregoing others) in offline and podcast advertising. She has served as an experienced strategist to over 100 brands across just about every category, scaling multi-million dollar campaigns that achieve goals and build businesses. As the head of the offline practice, a leader across marketing disciplines, and a seasoned driver of growth, she serves as a significant speaker, advisor, and contributor to both the marketing and media spaces.

When she’s not advising brands on how to diversify their paid media, marketing and customer acquisition strategies, she spends her time cooking, baking and gaming with her husband, playing with her hyper doodle, Mellow, and regardless of time of day, is probably trying to figure out what’s for dinner.

Matt Shapo is a product development and digital strategy leader who brings more than 20 years of experience overseeing the creation and multi-platform delivery of online content and internet advertising to his role as the Director of Digital Audio and Video at the IAB.

Before IAB, Matt served as VP of Digital Content for the All Access Music Group, a music marketing company and audio industry news publisher where he planned and led advertising, editorial, and other growth initiatives for AllAccess.com, a B2B website that delivers breaking news, data, and commentary to an audience of professional audio content creators, salespeople, and decisionmakers.

Over the course of his career, Matt has directed and measured the effectiveness of integrated advertising and email marketing campaigns for multiple leading record labels and radio companies. He has also led the ideation, development, launch, and continuous iteration of profitable digital media products, including an industry leading digital audio distribution platform that delivers new music and related content to a nationwide user base of radio stations, streaming services, tv networks, podcasters, and others.

Matt holds a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Tufts University and an M.F.A. in Radio, TV, and Film Production from Florida State University, and he is a devoted fan of his hometown Miami Dolphins. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, and their wonderful son Evan, in Randolph, NJ where he is an enthusiastic hiker and a proud member of the Randolph High School Marching Rams parents’ road crew.

Jen Soch is the Executive Director, Specialty Channels (Audio & Local Video, DR, Publishing and AdvancedTV) at GroupM. She was most recently the Integrated Global Investment Lead at Mindshare overseeing the Facebook Business. In this role, she led all investment channels including Video, Audio, Programmatic, Image, Search, Social, and Digital. Jen was accountable for the Investment strategy, oversight, delivery, operations, and total buying. In this position, she was essential to the delivery of cohesive campaigns and ensured fluidity across all channels and tactics.

Prior, Jen was with FairShare where her focus was on driving strategy, analytics, operations, and investment for Domo as well as the EVP, Commercial at the Guardian where she ran the U.S. Commercial Operations focusing on effective delivery of advertising solutions. Jen has spent over two decades working for media agencies such as Ammarti Puris, Dentsu-Aegis, MEC, and MediaVest where she led planning, strategy, and investment activity for a range of client accounts. Jen spent over 10 years in the Advanced TV Space where she helped to define the Addressable and Digital Marketplaces (including OTT, VOD and Mobile). Jen attended Lehigh University and has an MDA from Fordham and she is a ski jumping, saxophone playing, proud mom.

Pam is a 30+ year veteran of the media and marketing industry who is a proven media strategist across digital, programmatic, and traditional platforms. Known for innovative approaches to media and marketing challenges that turn the complex media eco system into understandable ideas for both the C-Suite and day-to-day tacticians. Pam sees the world as a white board – empty, boundless space to create, transform and innovate for growth; to re-imagine how media and marketing can work to grow brands and build companies. Pam believes winning at the intersection of data, content, marketplace, and technology means refusing to let the status quo be good enough and being humble enough to know true transformation takes collaboration, iteration, willpower, and trust.

Pam spent her first 25 years on the agency side at Publicis Media leading clients such as Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Activision, Yahoo and others. In addition to client leadership Pam built new practices for the agency including Advanced TV and Experience Design. To broaden her experience, Pam also spent 3 years leading Media for Starcom Mediavest Group in Russia when that market first opened to media in the mid-1990s. This taught Pam that anything is possible to create in the marketplace with some ingenuity, marketplace knowledge, and a relentless push creates win – win – win experiences for consumers, marketers and publishers. Following her work on the agency side, Pam spent five years consulting for the media and technology companies (NBCU, Fox, Viacom, Double Verify) helping them design custom programs and market their digital assets for growth. For the past fifteen months, Pam has been at Amobee, an Ad Tech firm, leading their marketing and sales strategy efforts to bring new identity, performance and new targeting techniques to the DSP and cross channel planning marketplace.

Pam lives in Hastings on Hudson, NY with her two sons.