Digital Day Camp, produced by David U.K. and Rob Beeler, will be a day of sharing ideas to move digital advertising forward in Canada. We will discuss key topics not only at a strategic level but also at a practical level. You will leave the event with ideas on transforming the industry and your company's future.
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The agenda is focused on a collaboration between publishers, agencies, brands and ad tech partners to share ideas to move digital advertising forward in Canada and transform the industry and our future.
28th Floor Cafe & Bar
8:00 - 9:00
Arrival & Welcome
Welcome! Start your day with us by joining for registration and a light breakfast. Network, grab a coffee, and get ready for the inspiring day ahead.
SESSION HIGHLIGHTS
More sessions are coming daily. What’s live now is just the first release
— the full agenda will more than double as we roll out additional sessions across both days.
Explore the partnership between WPP Media and Bell Media, highlighting its role in evolving the Canadian media landscape. Discover how WPP Media's investment, targeting 50% spend on Canadian platforms, is coupled with Bell Media's advanced data and ad tech infrastructure to deliver precise audience connections and business outcomes for clients. The session will highlight real-world impact, going beyond traditional metrics to deliver tangible results, foster innovation, and build a dynamic Canadian media ecosystem.
From Attention to Outcomes: WPP Media and Bell Media's Blueprint for a Stronger Canadian Media Market
Keynote
Urania Agas
Chief Operating Officer
WPP Media
Matt McGowan
SVP, Business Solutions
Bell Media
As self-serve platforms gain traction, Canadian publishers are rethinking how they attract new demand, streamline operations, and compete with global platforms like Meta. Featuring real-world perspectives from Radio-Canada and The Score, this interactive session explores how self-serve is unlocking new advertiser segments, reducing operational friction, and returning more dollars directly to publishers. Expect candid learnings, practical insights, and an open dialogue on what it actually takes to make these platforms work in the Canadian market.
The Buyer You've Never Met: How Canadian Publishers Are Reclaiming Revenue & Control
Emilie
Gauthier-Messier
Senior specialist, Sales operations
CBC & Radio-Canada
Michael Gelb
Head of Account Management
DanAds
Alex Campbell
Sr. Director Ad Tech & Programmatic
The Score
AI is reshaping how content and media strategy is developed and distributed as well as the monetization models across publishers, agencies, and brands. Kin-Man Lee (SJC) and Robin LeGassicke (Cairns Oneil) will explore how AI is separating ideation from execution, unlocking new efficiencies, and exposing structural challenges across the ecosystem — from workflows to client readiness.
AI, Unbundled: Rewiring Content, Creative, and the Media Value Chain
Kin-man Lee
President & COO
SJC media
Robin LeGassicke
Chief Transformation Officer
Cairns Oneil
Agentic capabilities are evolving — but the real opportunity is collaboration. Geneviève Roy (La Presse) and Alexandre Simard (OMC) explore how publishers and agencies can work together to build agentic models that drive better insights, efficiency, and accuracy.
Grounded in work from the Quebec market, this session covers emerging business models, aligning tools, data, and skills, and the impact on workflows. We’ll also touch on risks and what’s next, including synthetic panels, MCP, and AdCP.
An interactive discussion with the room on what scalable collaboration could look like across Canadian media.
Agentic Media: Building Collaboration, Not Control
Geneviève Roy
Managing Director
La Presse
Alexandre Simard
Chief Media Officer
Touché!
The resurgence of true planning discipline, increased scrutiny on social platforms, client pressure and questions, and the real challenges brands face when attempting to in-house without the proper tools and infrastructure.
The Craft & Art of Media Planning
Stef Mallaci
Head of Brand Partnerships
Narcity
Caroline Breton
Managing Director
Involved Media
Search is being rewritten. As Gen AI reshapes how consumers find and choose brands, visibility now happens inside answers—not just results pages.
This session explores the shift from keywords to conversations, the rise of zero-click behavior, and why paid, organic, and content can no longer operate in silos. As AI becomes the front door to discovery, being cited and contextually relevant is now as important as driving clicks.
We’ll unpack what an integrated search mindset looks like in practice looks like in practice—how to align teams, rethink messaging for conversational queries, and adapt measurement as impressions, citations, and influence replace traditional signals. From upper-funnel demand to conversion, search is expanding across the full marketing stack.
Built for leadership, this is a strategic look at where to place bets, how to structure for speed, and how to ensure your brand shows up when it matters most.
From Search to Answer: Winning in the Age of AI Discovery
Amy Sturino
Head of Search
Omnicom Media Group
Basil Hatto
SVP Product
NP Digital
As AI reshapes planning, targeting, and optimization, systemic bias in data is influencing business outcomes in ways most teams don’t see. This conversation brings together leaders from across the ecosystem to unpack how bias impacts performance, where accountability sits, and how to build smarter, more inclusive growth strategies.
Bias in the Machine: Rethinking Data, AI & Performance in Modern Media
Gah - Yee Won
Interim Country Lead, Consumer Group Canada
Intuit
Nikki Stone
Founder & Business Futures Architect
YQ
Alan Sifuentes
Chief Digital Officer
Ad Club and Chameleon
We’ve spent years treating trust as something brands build through messaging. But today, trust is shaped long before a message is ever seen. In a fragmented, algorithm-driven ecosystem, media context has become the signal. Where a brand shows up, the environments it funds, and the companies it keeps now define how it’s perceived. From premium Canadian publishers to scaled network inventory, every decision carries meaning — commercially, and increasingly, socially. This agency–publisher conversation unpacks a fundamental shift: trust is no longer just a brand outcome, it’s a media outcome. At a leadership level, we’ll explore what this means for investment strategies, how trust translates into real commercial value, and whether the industry is truly aligning around it.
Trust Isn’t Bought. It’s Inherited
Beth Thomson
Head of Strategy
Hearts & Science
Jes Biagioni
Senior Vice President of Sales & Strategy
Ideon Media
Ontario is challenging the perception of government advertising as cautious and rigid. In this session, the Government of Ontario and WPP Media share how one of Canada’s largest advertisers is building a faster, more responsive media model. With a clear commitment to supporting local Ontario and Canadian publishers while delivering performance at scale, this approach is designed for the pace and complexity of today’s media landscape. You will hear how campaigns are executed in step with the news cycle, powered by a deeply integrated partnership between the government’s internal digital team and its media agency.
The result is a model that is more agile, accountable, and aligned than most would expect from the public sector.
Not Your Typical Government Advertiser
Jodi Peacock
President
EssenceMediacom
Ryan Ghaeli
Assistant Director - Media Buying, Performance & Optimization
Ontario Government
​Jason Stein
Group Vice President
Zeta Global
4:40 - 6:10
Reception
Join us for the end-of-day reception. Relax, network, and enjoy refreshments as we wrap up a great day of learning and connections.