2006 Speakers

Yusuf Mehdi

Senior Vice President, Chief Advertising Strategist
Microsoft Corporation

As senior vice president and chief advertising strategist, Yusuf Mehdi is responsible for working with the leadership team to shape Microsoft's strategy for the online advertising market. He focuses on collaborating with groups across Microsoft delivering software-based services to ensure online advertising is a key part of their monetization strategy and planning processes.

Previously, he led the MSN Information Services engineering group that pioneered Microsoft's entry into the online search business, where amongst other significant achievements, Mr. Mehdi helped grow monthly unique users to 465 million per month, increased online ad revenue to over US$1.5 billion per month, and significantly improved customer satisfaction. Under his leadership as corporate vice president in charge of worldwide sales and marketing, MSN turned its first profit and become the most popular destination on the Web. Before that, Mr. Mehdi was responsible for the marketing of Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 1.0 through 5.0. Mr. Mehdi also played key roles in the marketing of Microsoft Windows 98, Windows 95 and Windows 3.1.

Before joining Microsoft in 1992, Mehdi was a product manager at Reuters Group PLC, where he helped roll out the first PC-based Reuters Terminal, which became the standard computing platform for the company. Mr. Mehdi holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Princeton University and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Washington.