Cindy Deng is MD APAC for Turn. Here she discusses Turn's recent launch in Hong Kong and the roll out of the solution across the APAC region.

Is there significance behind Turn choosing Hong Kong for their APAC launch?

Hong Kong is ideally situated geographically, giving us easy access to all of our major markets including Japan, China, Australia and Southeast Asia. In addition, Turn's state-of-the-art data centre was already located in Hong Kong, so it made sense to establish our regional headquarters here as well. Ultimately, these advantages combined with an excellent pool of talented, passionate people and the dynamic nature of the city that complements Turn's forward-thinking culture, made Hong Kong a perfect choice.

Having come from Yahoo!, what motivated you to jump on board with Turn for their APAC launch?

While at Yahoo!, I looked at various DSP and DMP technologies to use internally to further strengthen their performance advertising business. I’ve come to know various offerings in the market, and therefore understand the challenges faced by both the publisher and the advertiser.

I was especially impressed by Turn’s technology and its reputation as the most trusted platform to deliver performance. In addition, I admired Turn’s proven ability to innovate as well as its culture of transparency to both its employees and its customers. Ultimately, though, it was the region's critical need for comprehensive solutions, such as those offered by Turn, that led me to join the company.

While the US and EU have a headstart in the adoption of real-time bidding and programmatic buying, APAC's demand for data-driven audience targeting is growing rapidly. Australia is already seeing significant adoption in programmatic media buying, and Japan is also seeing high growth, as well as the emergence of several local players in this space who are helping to expedite the education in the market.

As the need for data-driven audience targeting increases, the value of having a scalable data management platform also becomes a necessity. Especially in Australia, we’re seeing growing demand from advertisers, agencies and publishers because first-party data (and the ability to draw actionable insights from this data) provides them with a critical advantage when it comes to understanding their customer base and improving their marketing spend and execution. Turn’s combined DSP and DMP solutions are best positioned to deliver these needs to marketers in APAC, and I’m honoured to lead the growth of Turn in this region.

Can you discuss the partnership with Emerge Digital?

We are committed to providing marketers with the broadest access to both global and locally-relevant inventory, audiences and data. The partnership with Emerge Digital is an important step in this direction. Through Emerge Digital, Turn will have access to additional APAC-focused inventory and audience data, which will enable us to develop private buying opportunities between advertisers and publishers while securing both parties' data in a data-safe manner. Ultimately, partners such as Emerge Digital provide us with an unparalleled opportunity to meet the needs of local advertisers and publishers alike.

Turn already has a new customer in the region, iClick Interactive. Can you tell us the significance of this client?

While Turn already has ongoing relationships with many of the global agency holding companies, iClick represents our first independent regional agency client. iClick has a great reputation for delivering performance-driven results to its customers across the APAC region, especially in Hong Kong, China,and the rest of Southeast Asia. iClick's success demonstrates that programmatic media buying is not exclusively driven by global agencies, but by forward-looking independent agencies as well. Companies like iClick realise that they need to be at the forefront of this disruptive change and we are excited to work with them to take advantage of this rapidly-evolving marketplace.

Given the strength of mobile in Southeast Asia, will Turn offer clients to buy mobile inventory through its platform?

The Asia Pacific region accounts for over 50% of all mobile users worldwide, many of whom are increasingly using their mobile devices as a first screen. For example, in Japan 14% of all site visits are made via smartphones. With over $2.5bn in mobile advertising spending, APAC is now the global leader in mobile advertising, making this a high priority area for Turn.

Mobile is already a part of our offering along with display, video and social (both through Facebook Exchange and Facebook Social), and will be a key element of our multi-channel strategy in Asia. We already support the MMA and IAB ad formats and can enable marketers to target by device, content and geolocation. Since each media channel can be accessed within one platform through Turn, marketers can more efficiently manage their cross channel campaigns through consolidated reporting and analytics, budget allocation and global frequency capping.

Given the region's position at the forefront of mobile usage, it is likely that the needs of APAC will drive many of our future mobile innovations.

Is this initial launch looking specifically at Southeast Asia, or are you are also looking at China and Japan?

Turn's technology has been fully functional across all APAC markets as of October, and we already have campaigns running in Australia, Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. Campaigns in India, Japan and China will be launching soon, and we are in the process of establishing local business operations and staff in Australia, Singapore and Japan to directly support the ongoing needs from these markets. For the time being, China will be supported by our regional experts in Hong Kong. Our wide-reaching launch strategy is a result of a growing number of agencies asking specifically for Turn's solutions in these respective markets.

In terms of inventory sources, will DSPs and trading desks have to look to local networks and SSPs for scale?

In order to add value to our customers, we are always looking for unique inventory sources. In Japan, for example, there are several locally-developed SSPs that have a significant number of high quality inventory sources.

Turn is also already integrated with all of the major global exchanges and SSPs, so we have significant scale in terms of inventory sources. As these global exchanges and SSPs expand into the APAC region, they will inevitably start building local scale, benefiting DSPs like Turn who are already integrated with these sources.

We at Turn believe that integration with a variety of partners, from local networks, to SSPs and global players, enables us to provide our clients with both high quality and scaleable inventory, a key element to achieving success in the market.