Programmatic Manager - Trading & Activation

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Publicis Groupe is the third largest communications group in the world. Founded in Paris in 1926, we are present in more than 100 countries as leaders in marketing, communication, and digital business transformation. Two of its biggest solution hubs in Singapore - Publicis Communications and Publicis Media & Digital.

Publicis Communications, the creative communications hub of the Publicis Groupe, is a collective of the most passionate, purposeful, and progressive creative agencies in Singapore. They are Publicis Worldwide, Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, Prodigious, and MSL.

Publicis Media & Digital, which is comprised of global media agency brands Starcom, Zenith, Spark Foundry, and Performics, is powered by digital-first, data-driven global practices that together, help our clients navigate the modern media landscape.

Our two other solution hubs, Publicis Sapient and Publicis Commerce, empower businesses to embrace digital transformation and equip them with a total commerce experience.

About APEX Exchange:

APEX Exchange is an innovative and disruptive investment solution designed to create unique opportunities that deliver tangible business benefits for Publicis Media Clients. These opportunities take many forms, such as inventory discounts, guaranteed outcome buying models, and bespoke packages, but ultimately always answer a strategic or business challenge that our Clients are facing. We work closely with our media partners to identify these opportunities, and then take on a principle investment position in order to make them come to life on behalf of our Clients.

APEX is one of the fastest growing global solutions, with teams across the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific, and is at the heart of Publicis Media’s value proposition for Clients. In Asia Pacific specifically, Singapore is one of four APEX hubs, alongside China, Australia, and India.

As the Programmatic Manager – Trading & Activation, you will play a key role within the APEX Singapore trading and operations team, supporting programmatic activation across Singapore and regional APAC markets.

This is a hands-on trading role with leadership responsibilities, suited to an experienced programmatic specialist who is ready to take greater ownership of campaign delivery, optimisation, troubleshooting and the development of junior traders.

The successful candidate will manage campaigns across the full lifecycle — from media recommendation and platform setup through activation, optimisation, reporting and reconciliation — with particular responsibility for campaigns operating against guaranteed media outcomes such as CPM, CPV/CPCV, CPC and other performance-based KPIs.

Working closely with APEX Operations, Client Services, agency teams, platform partners and media vendors, this person will ensure campaigns are activated accurately, paced effectively and continuously optimised against both client objectives and APEX commercial commitments.

Beyond individual campaign execution, the Programmatic Manager will act as a senior point of reference for the trading team, helping establish best practices, reviewing complex setups, supporting troubleshooting and coaching junior team members.

Key Responsibilities:

Programmatic Trading & Campaign Management

• Own end-to-end execution of programmatic campaigns, including campaign planning, setup, trafficking, QA, launch, pacing, optimisation and post-campaign reconciliation.
• Operate hands-on across key buying platforms such as DV360, The Trade Desk and Google Ads, with exposure to other DSPs and paid-social platforms considered advantageous.
• Translate campaign objectives and guaranteed KPIs into appropriate bidding, audience, inventory and optimisation strategies.
• Proactively monitor campaign delivery and performance and take corrective action against under-delivery or KPI risk.
• Identify opportunities to improve CPM, CPV/VTR, CPC/CTR, viewability, reach and other relevant performance indicators.
• Manage campaigns against agreed guaranteed outcomes while understanding the relationship between media performance, delivery and commercial risk.
• Monitor pacing and forecast delivery risk before it becomes a campaign issue.
• Recommend appropriate optimisation strategies while balancing performance, scale, inventory availability and client requirements.
• Support campaign reconciliation and ensure final delivery accurately reflects agreed media commitments.

Technical & Operational Excellence

• Lead QA across campaign setup, targeting, budgets, frequency, creatives, tracking and inventory.
• Troubleshoot campaign issues including under-delivery, creative rejection, tracking discrepancies, brand-safety concerns and measurement gaps.
• Ensure correct implementation and QA of campaign measurement including CM360/Floodlights and relevant third-party verification solutions.
• Maintain strong working knowledge of brand safety, suitability, viewability and verification partners such as DoubleVerify and IAS.
• Ensure adherence to APEX SOPs, platform policies and client-specific governance requirements.

Team Leadership & Capability Development

• Act as a senior day-to-day trading resource for junior traders and operations executives.
• Review complex campaign setups and provide guidance on optimisation and troubleshooting.
• Support onboarding and platform training for junior team members.
• Drive knowledge-sharing sessions around platform developments, campaign learnings and optimisation best practices.
• Help strengthen QA frameworks, documentation and trading SOPs across the team.
• Support the Operations Director in workload prioritisation and campaign escalation where required.

Agency & Stakeholder Partnership

• Work closely with APEX Client Services and Publicis agency teams to translate briefs into executable programmatic recommendations.
• Contribute to RFP responses, media proposals, forecasts and campaign recommendations.
• Communicate campaign performance and optimisation rationale clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Develop productive relationships with DSPs, publishers, measurement partners and other technology vendors.
• Identify new inventory, audience, data and platform capabilities that could strengthen APEX proposals.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.
• 3–5 years of hands-on programmatic media buying/trading experience, preferably within an agency, trading desk, ad-tech company or DSP.
• Demonstrable hands-on experience managing campaigns within at least one major DSP, ideally DV360 and/or The Trade Desk.
• Strong understanding of the programmatic ecosystem including DSPs, SSPs/exchanges, ad serving, audience/data solutions and third-party verification.
• Strong knowledge of campaign setup, bidding, pacing, optimisation and troubleshooting.
• Comfortable analysing campaign data and translating findings into clear optimisation actions.
• Understanding of digital measurement, attribution and discrepancies between ad platforms, ad servers and analytics platforms.
• Strong Excel/data-analysis capabilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple campaigns and priorities within a fast-paced environment.
• Comfortable coaching less experienced traders and taking ownership during campaign escalations.

Advantageous Experience

• Campaign Manager 360 / Floodlight implementation and troubleshooting.
• Google Ads/YouTube, Meta or TikTok activation experience.
• Experience with DoubleVerify, IAS or similar verification technology.
• Exposure to CTV, DOOH, rich media or emerging programmatic inventory.
• Experience operating campaigns across multiple APAC markets.
• Experience working against guaranteed or outcome-based media commitments.
• Familiarity with Looker Studio, Power BI, SQL, Python or workflow automation.
• Previous experience mentoring junior traders.