Women to Watch Greater China 2021: Ada Gu, The Trade Desk

Ada Gu

Lead associate account director, China
The Trade Desk
Shanghai

At Linksus Communications Group, Ada Gu supported the Expo 2010 Shanghai SAIC-GM Auto Pavilion. The SAIC-GM Auto Pavilion was named the Most Popular Corporate Pavilion at the event, and Gu was commended as an Outstanding Expo Contributor. And at FleishmanHillard, she won the Gold Prize for Marketing Communications. Then, she went to Yale University, earned an MBA, and sharpened her data analytics and programming expertise.

With her business acumen and excellent leadership, the number of new clients at the agency increased more than ten times in 2020 compared to the year before, and revenue growth more than ten times. In a campaign for a hotel client, Gu led the team to overcome the travel industry's challenges in acquiring new customers with full-channel programmatic media buying strategies. As a result, she successfully improved the campaign ROI by 10 times.

Gu's enthusiasm has also inspired many fresh graduates and students to consider a career in adtech, and she is always willing to share her knowledge with the younger generation. As a lecturer in data-driven advertising on TTD's online education platform TTD Edge China, Gu is committed to sharing her learnings in programmatic advertising to others, and doing her bit to elevate the industry.

She also advocates using tech to promote social development. A digital campaign that she initiated for Philips Avent in China rallied more than 20,000 moms to encourage breastfeeding for 180 days and set a Guinness World Record for the largest online photo album of handwritten notes. The campaign generated many valuable online discussions on the importance of breastfeeding.

Gu’s achievements were so impressive that one client said: “Ada Gu is the most experienced expert in programmatic advertising I have ever seen in my career."