Bernadette O'Reilly

I decided to set up Lucamedia in early 2007, after 3 years in London at Ask.com (a global search engine), where I was Director of Commercial Development, responsible for commercial strategy development, revenue management and commercial operations. I really enjoyed working with cross functional teams in San Francisco, New York and London, building out the infrastructure for a scaleable global revenue business across search, display and email marketing.

After Ask, whilst considering what to do next, digital colleagues confided the difficulty of sourcing advice from people who understand the commercial dependencies within digital and online businesses. I realised that my destiny was not to utilise my experience in any one organisation, rather to deploy it by helping existing digital businesses and new entrants – hence the launch of Lucamedia.

My initial business apprenticeship was in UK TV media sales with a then market leader Thames Television. I worked there for 15 years. Because of my media background, I have always been on the edge of development, and by default an early adopter of new technologies/services. My first Internet business experience was in 2000, as Project Director for u>direct.tv, a planned pay per view, near video on demand web business alongside their 17 UK near video on demand satellite TV channels, for which I was Director of Sales. This was all ahead of time, but now, 7 years later, it’s a very exciting time again the for Web/TV development.

My personal and professional lives continue to converge. Deliberations regarding triple/quad home communications providers continue whilst I evaluate price, customer service, content and convenience, and debate this with my sports mad household. I enjoy watching social networking developments, particularly keeping tabs on my 12 year old daughter, and observing how central MySpace and Facebook are to my 18 year old son’s social life, both online and offline. They keep me informed about the Games market and observing our different individual media usage patterns is very useful professional research for me.

To keep things together, I put on my running shoes, and switch on my IPod and keep on trucking!