VivaKi scales audience on demand in APAC through regional activation center

VivaKi scales audience on demand in APAC through regional activation center

APAC

MUMBAI: VivaKi continues the global expansion of audience on demand (AOD) and announced the launch of a regional activation center for Asia Pacific, based in Singapore. Following substantial growth of AOD and increasing global demand, the center will launch and aggressively scale Publicis Groupe’s addressable media practice throughout Asia Pacific. Grace Liau has been appointed to lead the operations as regional GM.

AOD is Publicis Groupe’s multi-channel digital addressable media buying practice that enables global and local advertisers to reach the right audiences, at the right time, at scale, across all digital touchpoints in real-time. Combining the talent of some of the industry’s leading addressability experts along with industry-leading technology and data partnerships, AOD delivers data-driven display, video, social and mobile advertising buys for Publicis Groupe agencies including Starcom MediaVest Group, ZenithOptimedia, Razorfish and DigitasLBi.

As one of the first entrants in the real time bidding marketplace, AOD is recognised as the most trusted solution in the industry. Globally, AOD has served more than 280 billion impressions across more than 110,000 campaigns for 2,283 advertisers in 23 countries.

VivaKi country chair in southeast Asia Jeffrey Seah said: "Audience On Demand (AOD) is VivaKi‘s proprietary trading desk technology. It represents the epitome of laser-targeting consumers - a real-time matching of advertising inventory to consumer profiles. Just like programmatic trading in the financial stockbroking houses, AOD will bring an industrial-level of efficiency over "retail" media buying and will provide our agencies with the competitive advantage needed in our technology-infused industry."

The aim of the regional Activation Center is to proficiently scale the Groupe’s digital addressable media practice across Asia Pacific, whilst maintaining global consistency and the high standards AOD is synonymous with. Following highly successful beta testing of AOD across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia this news also formally launches AOD in South East Asia.

“AOD was built to provide clients with quality, service, safety and transparency in the programmatic space. Our commitment is to preserve these benefits even as we pursue an aggressive growth strategy. Establishing an activation center in Singapore, and installing a respected, experienced AOD expert at the helm, allows us to scale AOD in a vital region while ensuring the unique value proposition of the offering. Grace and her team will activate all the attributes of AOD, including the VivaKi Verified standards, which no other programmatic option can offer,” VivaKi CEO Frank Voris expounded.
Originally from Singapore, Grace has spent the past 20 years living in Boston and transfers into her new role with a formidable track record in the online advertising sector. Grace is a digital marketing pioneer and was part of the original VivaKi team that launched AOD in 2008. Most recently at VivaKi, Grace has lead the Platforms Partnership team and the Ad Operations Center of Excellence (Ad Ops COE), an internal consultancy focused on establishing a community of world-class digital advertising professionals that develop and lead digital ad operations best practices across VivaKi.

Prior to joining VivaKi, Grace headed up the Media Operations & Technology practice for Digitas where she was responsible for developing bespoke strategies for clients and leading their Advanced Targeting technologies work. Grace will transition into her new role at the beginning of October and will report into Kurt Unkel. Also joining the Activation Center team in Singapore is Stephen Tompkins as AOD Director. Stephen transferred to his new role in August and will be tasked with driving growth of AOD across the APAC network. Stephen joined VivaKi in 2011 as a platform expert and has been an instrumental part of the team. Most recently Stephen has been based in Beijing where he has been responsible for driving adoption of AOD across the region. Kurt Unkel, President, Products & Solutions for VivaKi comments: “Grace and Stephen are industry experts in addressable and programmatic media. Both have global experience, are proven collaborators which have made them instrumental to AOD’s success. They will preserve and enhance the benefits of AOD as we scale the offering and grow markets.” This news follows the recent announcement that VivaKi has launched an Activation Center in Amsterdam to proficiently scale AOD across Europe. A third regional activation center is currently being planned in China.