Gila Wilensky

Gila Wilensky hails from what she calls the “First Family of Search.” Gila’s older twin siblings, who run a decade-old boutique search consultancy, inspired her own career foray into search engine optimization and marketing. Before joining Essence in 2013, Gila developed her experience at Morpheus Media & Promediacorp, helping entertainment and luxury digital brands maximize their search marketing efforts and build brand awareness. Gila has played a key role in Essence’s rapid growth over the past four and a half years; she joined the growing Google account in 2013 and built a team to run Google’s SEM and biddable media efforts (the largest Adwords account in the world). Gila also helped Google codify their global Adwords and Doubleclick best practices, and grew Essence’s social practice by 50x between 2013 and 2016.

Gila assumed the role of Head of Media Activation, North America, in August 2016, and has since reorganized Essence’s digital media buying into a single department spanning SEM, Social and Display across eight offices and all of Essence’s North American clients. Recent achievements include Essence being awarded #1 Programmatic agency by AdExchanger in 2017. Gila is regularly interviewed and by leading industry publications on the topic of social media and digital trends. She has been featured in Digiday, Marketing Land and AdExchanger and also sits on the GroupM North America Advisory Board. In her spare time, she’s a passionate home cook.