S

SmartNews

AI-powered news aggregation and curation app

Programmatic Manager

Full-TimeUpdated on 10/23/2026
No salary listed
Mid, Senior
Tokyo, Japan
HybridHybrid workplace in Tokyo.
Sales & Account ManagementBusiness Development & Partnerships

About the job

Requirements
  • At least 3–5 years of experience in programmatic advertising, with a solid understanding of the programmatic landscape and its complexities.
  • A strong analytical and data-driven mindset for analyzing performance, identifying trends, and making informed decisions.
  • Communication, collaboration, and negotiation skills to build relationships with external partners and internal stakeholders.
  • Experience working with programmatic platforms and ad technologies, including Google Ad Manager and SSPs and/or DSPs such as The Trade Desk, PubMatic, and Magnite.
  • Fluency in Japanese for understanding the Japanese market and communicating effectively with partners.
  • Business-level English to communicate strategies and ideas with internal stakeholders.
Responsibilities
  • Manage inventory monetization across SSPs and DSPs to maximize digital advertising revenue.
  • Oversee daily technical and commercial partnerships with external programmatic platforms and ad networks.
  • Set up, monitor, and troubleshoot Private Marketplace deals and Preferred Deals for premium inventory.
  • Track key metrics such as fill rates, eCPMs, and floor prices to identify revenue blockages.
  • Work with Ad Operations to manage publisher ad server configurations, price floors, and unified auction wrappers within Google Ad Manager.
  • Work with the Ad Quality team to enforce ad quality standards and prevent malware, poor user experiences, and competing content.
  • Work closely with the Ads Product lead and Ad Operations lead to realize new and existing revenue opportunities.
  • Troubleshoot ad delivery issues and events that affect revenue in collaboration with Ad Operations.
  • Serve as the main point of contact for external programmatic buyers and maintain and grow those relationships.
Desired Qualifications
  • Technical knowledge of Prebid SDK configuration and managing wrapper auction dynamics.
  • Ability to set and control dynamic floor prices within SSPs to prevent content undervaluation.
  • Experience executing Programmatic Guaranteed and Private Marketplace campaigns.
  • Familiarity with yield analytics dashboards such as Adomik or Looker to track programmatic revenue.
  • Experience packaging publisher first-party data via clean rooms or curation platforms for premium SSP deals.

About the company

SmartNews aggregates news from over 3,000 publishers into a single app, letting users read a wide range of stories in one place. It relies on machine learning to analyze articles, social signals, and user behavior to surface trending and relevant news, with features like SmartView for fast reading and offline access. The service earns mainly from ads and revenue-sharing deals with publishers, plus SmartNews+ for premium content from many media partners. Its goal is to reduce information overload by providing broad, newspaper-like discovery rather than hyper-personalized feeds, while sustaining the business through publisher partnerships and advertising.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Debt Financing

Total Funding

$486.5M

Headquarters

Tokyo, Japan

Founded

2012

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • April 2026 Docomo renamed My Magazine to SmartNews for docomo, expanding Japanese reach.
  • May 2026 SmartNews Ads Conference named 64 partner agencies, including CyberAgent and Hakuhodo DY ONE.
  • July 17, 2026 AI Transformation Division signals product velocity and cost automation focus.

What critics are saying

  • Bloomberg's March 2026 Tokyo IPO report set up a likely down-round versus 2021 valuation.
  • SmartNews depends on publisher traffic and ad agencies; AP, Reuters, and media partners can renegotiate.
  • Google and Apple control distribution; App Store ranking changes can crush installs overnight.

What makes SmartNews unique

  • SmartView and 4,500+ publisher network preserve a clean, cross-source reading habit.
  • SmartNews Rewards, launched March 25, 2026, monetizes reading with gift-card incentives.
  • Docomo partnership and 64 agency partners deepen distribution across Japan and ads.

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Benefits

  • Health Insurance

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

1%
SmartNews, Inc.
Jul 31st, 2026
SmartNews Raises $38M Series D Funding|Newsroom|SmartNews, Inc.

Our latest funding round was led by Development Bank of Japan, followed by SMBC Venture Capital and Japan Co-Invest L.P. (managed by Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Investment). The new funds will be used to accelerate growth, hiring and business development, and to expand research and development of our machine learning technology for news discovery.

SmartNews, Inc.
Jul 31st, 2026
SmartNews Raises $36 Million in Round Led by Atomico, GREE|Newsroom|SmartNews, Inc.

TOKYO (August 8) -- SmartNews, the free, award-winning news-discovery app for iOS and Android, has raised $36 million in Series B funding, with significant investments from international investment firm Atomico and global mobile-social company GREE.

Associated Press
Mar 25th, 2026
SmartNews launches first US news app rewards programme for reading articles

SmartNews has launched a rewards programme in the US that allows users to earn points for reading news articles, marking the first initiative of its kind amongst American news apps according to the company's research. Users are automatically enrolled in challenges to earn points by reading a specified number of articles within set timeframes. Points can be redeemed through the Tango Rewards platform for gift cards at retailers like Amazon or charitable donations to organisations including the Special Olympics. The programme follows a successful rollout in Japan and underwent beta testing in the US from December 2025, showing strong adoption. Founded in 2012, SmartNews serves millions of users globally through partnerships with over 3,000 publishers and uses machine learning technology for news discovery.

INITIAL
Jul 19th, 2025
SmartNews: $1B Valuation, US Expansion

SmartNews, a news app available in Japan and the US, closed its Series E1 funding round in July 2019, achieving a valuation exceeding ¥100 billion, thus becoming a "unicorn." The funding was led by ACA Investments, with continued support from Globis Capital Partners. The company is focused on expanding in the US market, with plans for an IPO. Key figures involved in the funding include Tetsuya Matsumoto from SmartNews, Hiroyuki Ono from ACA, and Minoru Konno from GCP.

TechCrunch
Oct 12th, 2024
The Most Interesting Unicorns To Come Out Of Japan

Japan’s startup sector, despite being one of the biggest in the world, has lagged behind other regions like the U.S., China, and the U.K., in terms of the number of unicorns and the scale of venture capital investment. For years, an aging population, overall economic deflation, and salarymen’s inclination to work at traditional, big corporations meant the startup life wasn’t an attractive one for many.For context: Per a recent IMF report that cites CB Insights data, as of October 2023, the U.S. had about 661 unicorns, China counted 172, and the U.K. had 52. Japan had a mere seven unicorns. (PitchBook pegs the number of Japanese startups at nine, so it’s possible we have more unicorns in the market than these datasets suggest.)But things are looking up — somewhat