Plista appoints Serina Tsou to lead APAC operations

SINGAPORE - Plista has appointed GroupM veteran Serina Tsou to lead its Asia Pacific operations, effective immediately.

Prior to joining Plista, Tsou served as regional trading director at GroupM Asia Pacific, working with teams across Greater China, India and Southeast Asia. In this position, she also played a role in supporting the rollout of Plista in China, Malaysia and Thailand earlier this year.

In the newly created role, Tsou will be responsible for driving growth for the business across existing APAC markets including Australia, China, Malaysia and Thailand, as well as launching in new locations.

Based in Hong Kong, she will report to Michel De Rijk, Xaxis APAC CEO, and Nicolas Bidon, Plista global CEO.

In a statement, De Rijk said Tsou will be a “great asset” in driving Plista’s ongoing success in the region, having played “an instrumental role” in the success of GroupM’s digital media products business in the region.

In an interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific, Tsou said a key priority area will be working closely with premium publishers “to bring digital advertising to the next new height” amidst the parallel trend of clients welcoming native advertising.

“Native advertising is a hot topic in Asia, indeed," she said. "However, the definition of native is still evolving. In my view, native is not just about placement and design but also about making advertising as relevant as it can be, delivering material that is welcomed by the audience.”

Tsou said the digital advertising world is facing demand and supply challenges while ensuring quality delivery. The industry is changing so fast that agencies have to constantly evolve in order to respond to clients' needs.

“Digital campaigns become less effective when there is an information overload and the content becomes unrelated to the users, and thus minimising the usefulness of the advertisement,” she added.

Tsou sees Plista as well placed to provide additional revenue streams for publishers while delivering good results for advertisers through the whole sales funnel.

In doing so, she added, the company can also cater to the needs of users who want more precisely targeted information and recommendations.

“This is still something both advertisers and publishers need to understand, especially in up and coming markets,” said Tsou. “Smaller, non-intrusive formats do not always appear to generate best results [in] the lower funnel or generate the highest CPM right off the bat, but are a sustainable means for both supply and demand. It finally brings analysis of user behaviour to the table.”

Plista offers a programmatic platform for native ads and positions itself as a single-source solution for buying in-feed, outstream video, recommendation widgets and in-ad formats across both desktop and mobile inventory.

During her six years at GroupM, Tsou was responsible for developing and selling trading products to global advertisers. Prior to this, she worked as a media planner at WPP’s MEC Global in Taiwan.