40 Under 40 2020: Tasha Kaur, SpotX

Tasha Kaur

Operations director, Asia 
SpotX 
Singapore

“Having someone of Tasha [Kaur]'s calibre run our fastest growing region helps me sleep a little better a night,” says Kelly McMahon, SVP Global Operations of SpotX. However, one wonders if Kaur herself sleeps. She hit the ground running in her first year of joining SpotX in 2019, leading the largest operations team in Asia Pacific (APAC) for the company.

Kaur facilitated the growth of video ad revenue among SpotX’s media owner partners by 173% year-on-year from 2019 to 2020. Besides increasing programmatic adoption and launching 46 new media-owner partners in Southeast Asia, she also rolled out SpotX’s Audience Management Engine, which allows media partners to activate first- and third-party data seamlessly across their programmatic transactions.

Her victories include launching the SpotX PurePlay for Unilever and McDonalds in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, exceeding KPIs for viewability, completed views and cost per completed view. The new outstream ad format her team built for GDP Network also increased viewability from 34% to 75%, leading to increased spend from Unilever Indonesia.

The streak of successes perhaps does not come as a surprise—Kaur has spent the last 10 years of her career building million-dollar media buying pipelines and leading regional teams to execute digital campaigns.

With a combination of experience from the buy and sell sides, Kaur has also proved to be a sought-after asset in troubleshooting and training teams. The adtech advocate has no qualms with bringing others up with her. She helped revamp the learning and development program for the Southeast Asian operations team, liaising with teams in the US and local partners to design a modular curriculum that can be tailor-made for individual needs. On top of that, Kaur managed to squeeze client training into her packed schedule—launching sessions including programmatic 101 and inventory optimisation in partnership with the marketing team.

Kaur’s overflowing talent in programmatic is now nourishing future generations. She is an advertising and tech mentor for two mentees in She Says and the Girls in Tech Mentorship Program, while volunteering in the latter.