Previous to Define Media Group, Brian served as Vice President, Audience Development for Focus.com, a venture-backed business media and research business and sold to Ziff Davis in 2011.  Under Brian’s audience guidance, Focus built dominant sites in each strategic vertical and launched Focus.com, the leading exchange of business expertise.

Through his consulting business, Scoreboard Media Group, Brian has worked with an array of businesses, from seed round startups to the world’s biggest brands, on complex internet issues. Though primarily known for his background in Search, he has also developed strategies for global brands in E-Commerce, Online Publishing, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing, Domain Name Investment, and M&A.

As an acknowledged thought leader in online audience and traffic acquisition, Brian maintains advisory roles in the startup and buy-side investment communities.

Brian studied Finance and Accounting at Texas A&M University.

Through his expertise in search marketing, social media and web analytics, Shahzad helps Define Media Group clients increase traffic, engagement, conversions and revenue.

Prior to joining Define Media Group, Shahzad was Director, Marketing for TVGuide.com in charge of SEO and Web Analytics. While at TV Guide, Shahzad worked closely with the product, engineering, creative and editorial teams to instill SEO best practices throughout the organization. In his time there, TV Guide’s search traffic increased 467%, leading to 23MM monthly uniques to TVGuide.com.

As Director, Marketing, Shahzad was also responsible for all quantitative analysis on TVGuide.com. Utilizing tools such as Nielsen, comScore, Google Analytics, Omniture, Web Trends and others, he worked closely with Ad Sales to tell the TVGuide.com story to prospective clients and aggressively differentiate TV Guide from its competitors.

Shahzad went to school at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in English, and did graduate work at the University of Cambridge.

Jay Leary is a Senior Strategist specializing in technical onsite analysis, web analytics and site usability. Jay employs his skill set to build organic site traffic through search optimization, in addition to promoting visitor retention and conversion behavior with usability testing and  analysis.

Prior to joining Define Jay worked at the agency level, providing optimization strategies to e-commerce, publishing and corporate internet properties. As a web analyst, he has tracked and reported on traffic data from a broad base of clients in a number of industries including: technology services, education, travel, hospitality and retail. His recommendations have led to appreciable gains in search traffic, as well as increased ROI for paid campaigns through improved conversion rates and visitor loyalty.

Jay holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Northwestern University.

Follow @adamsherk

As VP SEO and Social Media, Adam Sherk works with Define clients to develop and execute effective SEO, audience development and content promotion programs with a particular focus on social media integration. He serves as an embedded strategist and trainer for Define clients including major publishers, news and content sites and e-commerce.

Adam brings an additional perspective to the Define team through his 15+ years of experience in online public relations. As SEO and audience development continue to evolve, many of the practices directly relate to the online awareness and community building activities that Adam has actively engaged in for years.

Prior to joining Define Search Strategies, Adam worked for enterprise search marketing firm Global Strategies, now part of Neo@Ogilvy. Adam’s primary role was managing organic search marketing campaigns for IBM across multiple business units. He also worked with Cisco, focusing on news search optimization and training Cisco’s corporate communications team on optimizing corporate blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and videos.

Adam previously served as a VP at Atomic PR where he launched a regional office for the technology-focused firm and helped establish its initial client base.

Earlier in his career, Adam was VP of Internet Public Relations at Multimedia Marketing Group, one of the first interactive marketing firms, now part of WPP. While there he built an online public relations department from scratch and managed accounts utilizing a wide range of online marketing tactics including search engine optimization. During that time Adam was also one of the primary builders of Internet News Bureau, an e-mail press release service that was acquired by Internet.com, now part of Jupitermedia. He also created and moderated I-PR Digest, an e-mail discussion list on Internet public relations.

In addition, Adam worked for several years in Istanbul, Turkey where he was responsible for creating and managing corporate language training programs. His primary project was working with Siemens Business Services on an English-language call center for Toshiba notebook computers. He also developed special programs for Nestle, IBM and Coca Cola, as well as the largest national newspaper and several major banking institutions in Turkey.

Marshall was responsible for building About.com into the most successful content network on the Internet.  Acquired in March, 2005 by The New York Times he was named chief search strategist and was responsible for strategic initiatives, maximizing traffic and search engine exposure for NYTimes.com, Boston.com, IHT.com and About.com. During his time at the NYT he grew search referrals to over 25% of total traffic.

As a leader in the search industry since 1997, Mr. Simmonds has consulted with the biggest brands online including; The New York Times, About.com, The Boston Globe (Boston.com), New York Magazine, Wenner Media, Hearst Digital Publications, Time Inc, AOL, Conde Nast, Daily Candy, Newsweek, Oprah.com, AARP, ConsumerSearch, TV Guide, ToysRUs, ESPN International, PCMag, NHL.com, Real Age, Madison Square Garden, National Geographic, Rainbow Media, Hewlett-Packard, CBS, The Canadian Broadcast Company, Readers Digest, Gawker Media, Intel, Citigroup, CitySearch, Yellow Pages, TicketMaster, Expedia, Evite and many others.

Marshall studied Psychology at Portland State University in Oregon.