MediaMath hires APAC head from MediaCom

Vasudev, who started work this week in Singapore, is MediaMath’s first Asia-Pacific lead to be based in the region. Prior to this appointment, MediaMath’s London-based co-founders—Erich Wasserman, chief revenue officer, and Greg Williams, SVP of business development and MediaMath Open—jointly managed its growth in the region. 

Vasudev will report directly to Wasserman. 

“The market [Asia-Pacific] has taken off really fast for MediaMath, and they felt it required someone in the region, focused on the work full-time,” Vasudev told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “For starters, we have an increasing number of Asia-Pacific clients who are going global, and there is a need to build products for Asia.”

According to Vasudev, his task at MediaMath sounds both simple and direct: grow the business. But, he added, at MediaMath that goal means far more than just impacting the bottom line.
Although Vasudev has long been familiar with the ad tech firm thanks to his role with MediaCom, when fully briefed on his new role he found himself pleasantly surprised by the resources the firm has invested in Asia-Pacific.

“Beyond its immediate business, MediaMath has been helping the marketplace as a whole in an almost altruistic fashion," he said. "For example, its New Marketing Institute, a qualification programme for people in the industry, trained more than 2,700 people in 2014 with a curriculum identical to the one taught to the company’s new joiners.”

By willingly training people external to the company to be experts in a field where there is next to no talent, MediaMath has grown a talent pool not just for itself but for the entire industry, he added.

Vasudev also found the scope of Open impressive. The standalone portal helps clients and tech partners connect directly with each other and, if they choose, collaborate through MediaMath's TerminalOne platform. “There are more than 300 partners on it and, again, it really is more for the industry as a whole,” he said.

So beyond his internal goals of expanding MediaMath’s team of 30 in the region, expanding its offices beyond Singapore, Japan and Sydney, and building the firm’s client base, Vasudev also has to help build up the industry overall.

“MediaMath’s end vision is to be the marketing operating system of our clients, a platform they can run their entire marketing plan on,” said Vasudev. “To do that, we need to get the industry speaking the same language we do.” This ambition to reinvent the field has played a large part in convincing him to take on this new role, he added.

When contacted for comment, MediaCom stated that the search for Vasudev’s replacement was underway.