Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – GroupM’s outcome media company Xaxis in Malaysia has announced the promotion of its former Associate Director for Engagement Pamela Ooi to now become its new director of programmatic strategy and insights.
In her new role, Ooi shared in an exclusive interview with MARKETECH APAC, that she will be responsible for the strategic growth of programmatic teams’ development in Xaxis Malaysia, as well as playing an important role in the company’s new business and key client relationships.
She further shared with MARKETECH APAC, “The focus for Xaxis in 2022 will still be client-focused and crafting programmatic strategies to deliver against client’s business goals. There are several pillars that I will be working on (Client, Agency, Internal, Industry) which encompasses foundation building for clients’ own first party data, moving towards a cookie-less future and working across the GroupM agencies to provide strategic leadership across programmatic in delivering first class and innovative solutions.”
She will remain based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and will be working with Xaxis Regional counterparts in Singapore on regional clients. She will be reporting to Aravind Menon, managing director at Xaxis Malaysia, who also holds the same position for GroupM’s influencer marketing arm INCA in Malaysia.
“I am excited to take on a newly created role in Xaxis Malaysia as director, programmatic strategy and insights to drive programmatic adoption across GroupM clients. I look forward to working closely with clients and agencies to scale programmatic to even greater heights and to deliver value for our clients,” Ooi stated regarding her appointment.
Speaking about her past experiences at Xaxis, she shared that a lot has changed since her official entry into the company back in 2017 as a senior manager for engagement, saying that in her continuing four years of journey, the company continues to roll out new features and solutions, be it new ways of working or new standards of brand asset valuator (BAV).
Ooi explains, “To be a leader in this company, I learnt that you always have to stick to your intuition and speak out if you have something to say. The culture here is so inclusive and I feel at home in Xaxis. Challenges are always bound to come about, so the most important trait to have is resilience to overcome. I have learned that being in the forefront of the industry is not an easy feat and Xaxis and GroupM are the ones paving the way in the industry setting an example for all to follow,”
When asked about her insights regarding the challenges in the programmatic media industry, Ooi noted that while programmatic adoption has been on the rise since 2018, she notes that we are still in the emerging phase where there is so muchgrowth to uncover.
She further added that not all brands or advertisers are fully on-board with programmatic, as the level of understanding of how it works correlates with the comfort level with the data, technology, and platforms that comes into the mix.
“Aside from the mental barrier, there are also physical barriers like onboarding technology and data platforms, digital talents as well as investments that [go] into running programmatic. What we do in Xaxis is to simplify clients’ life in running programmatic media by having an all inclusive model thus eliminating all the silos that you see in adtech. I am hopeful that programmatic will continue to grow as all digital will soon be programmatic,” said Ooi.