SINGAPORE – Singapore Media Exchange (SMX), the digital alliance between Singapore’s premium publishers Mediacorp and Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), is officially operational , under the leadership of newly appointed CEO Hari Shankar.
A digital media marketing veteran, Shankar brings more than 15 years’ experience in media management to the new role. Before joining SMX, Hari was the Managing Director at Ecselis, the strategic arm of the Havas Media Group. He previously held leadership roles at Paypal and Performics in Asia-Pacific.
According to comScore, Mediacorp and SPH are among the top five digital properties with the highest traffic in Singapore, collectively reaching three in four digital consumers every month. The SMX coalition brings together some of the best-known, market-leading digital brands across news, business, automotive, property, entertainment and lifestyle verticals under one roof.
Beyond Mediacorp and SPH, SMX will be extending the co-operative to other like-minded premium publishers. There is already keen interest being seen from other publishers who are seeking alternative means to monetise their traffic.
AppNexus and Lotame have been selected as key technology partners after a six-month review. AppNexus will power the advertising exchange across all digital channels (desktop, mobile) and formats (display, video, native), while Lotame will underpin its data capabilities, including unifying audience data across its coalition partners. The technology partnership with AppNexus and Lotame closely follows the model behind Kiwi Premium Advertising Exchange, a similar publisher co-operative in New Zealand.
As part of its long-term product roadmap, SMX will continue to explore strategic collaborations and invest in new programmatic features to meet evolving advertiser needs. For example, SMX has a multi-screening capability that now enables advertisers to synchronise their programmatic buys real-time with TV event triggers. The ad sync feature leverages the strengths of Mediacorp’s TV reach to drive online-offline integrated marketing synergies. Such a capability has not been available in Singapore until now.
In addition, SMX will be one of the first strategic partners of the Advertising ID Consortium when it launches in the Asia-Pacific region. In an increasingly complex digital ecosystem with fragmented identifiers from multiple platforms, the Consortium, founded by AppNexus, Index Exchange, and LiveRamp, is focused on driving adoption of a unified and open identity solution that vastly improves identity resolution so that buyers and sellers of programmatic advertising can deliver more relevant campaigns. By rallying around a standardised global framework, Consortium partners can achieve meaningful scale, create more impactful engagement, and deliver better consumer experiences.
