meet our members
Our ‘Meet our Members’ series spotlights the diverse voices shaping digital marketing across the region. In this edition, we feature Kenneth Koh, Head of Commercial Sales, Southeast Asia, Yahoo DSP.
What unique characteristics define digital marketing in Southeast Asia, and what current opportunities do these present?
Southeast Asia’s (SEA) digital marketing landscape is defined by: a vast, mobile-first digital native population who live and breathe across multiple devices and screens. For marketers, this underscores the need for hyper-localisation and omnichannel strategies.
Against this backdrop, the open web’s ecosystem with capability enhancements such as greater cross-channel flexibility and access to data-driven, privacy-conscious tools alongside advancements in AI for personalisation and automation, enables marketers to deliver more meaningful engagement with unmatched scale and reach, while also gaining greater visibility and transparency over their campaigns to make smarter decisions.
With its capacity to execute campaigns across platforms, the growing interoperability of the open web enables advertisers to fully extend their omnichannel strategies to create a truly customer-centric, seamless and consistent brand experience across all customer touchpoints.
Over the years with cookieless changes, the open web ecosystem has also built a formidable inventory of user-consented, first-party data which makes it a powerful, readily primed platform that marketers can activate for success in today’s privacy-conscious world.
The mix of interoperability alongside the expanding pool of valuable first-party data and privacy-enhancing techniques, now powered by AI, gives marketers and advertisers firmer control over campaign performance, budgets and spend.
Considering the ever-evolving digital landscape in SEA, what is your company’s most significant ambition for the region that you feel will have the biggest impact?
AI is undoubtedly one of the most exciting developments in digital advertising. A recent Yahoo Singapore Digital Marketers Pulse study uncovered that 75% of marketers in Singapore were eager to harness AI and machine learning solutions this year, while 45% identified AI as a priority. Additionally, conversion is a top KPI although its becoming more challenging with consumers increasingly opting out of tracking.
With challenges increasingly weighing on marketers and advertisers, our ambition stems from our continued commitment to simplify the complexities of modern media buying, making it easier, more effective and efficient.
With AI being part of our DNA for over 20 years, we combined this experience with our core differentiator – direct consumer relationships – to bring one of our biggest ambitions to life: Yahoo Blueprint Performance (YBP). An AI-based, first-party data driven performance engine, YBP drives ad efficiency and optimisation throughout the campaign lifecycle, from planning to activation.
In SEA, we’ve already started seeing the transformative impact as advertisers utilising our AI-engine and our rich proprietary data of 30+ million authenticated users in the region are able to process 10 times more data with 90% faster response times, efficiently optimising campaigns and automatically reinvesting savings gained into working media.
How has IAB SEA+India helped you and your team stay ahead of industry trends and incorporate them into your work?
From brand safety to transparency, and first-party data reliance to AI, the digital advertising and programmatic landscape and its challenges are always evolving. Being at the forefront of developments that shape the industry globally and across SEA, we are constantly exploring new ways to deliver value for marketers and advertisers. Our approach has always been grounded in real industry needs, and IAB SEA+India’s exclusive resources, regular industry reports, and various knowledge exchange opportunities have helped the Yahoo DSP team to stay closely connected to the media and marketing industry in the region.