Our Industry Profile takes a look at some of the professionals working across the advertising, adtech, marketing and media sector in Australia. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the buzzing industry.
This week we speak to Eugene du Plessis, Pathmatics ANZ Regional Director.
Time in current role/time at the company:
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I joined Pathmatics just over six months ago as we launched into the ANZ region to build upon the success of the Pathmatics US presence and focus on growing the company’s local footprint.
How would you describe what the company does?
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Pathmatics is a digital marketing intelligence platform that turns the world’s marketing data into actionable insights. We provide an in-depth view of the digital advertising space on where and how much brands are spending by tracking advertiser activity from over 2000 websites daily. This includes spend, impressions, creatives, messaging, channel and site breakdowns across news websites, Facebook, Google and YouTube. We enable marketers, brands and publishers to view, assess, and understand the digital advertising strategies of their competitors.
What do you do day-to-day?
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I help our core clients identify market opportunities to grow their business with our data and provide customer feedback to our product team for continual improvements on our roadmap.
Define your job in one word:
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Growth.
I got into digital market industry because:
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My first pure digital role was in 2007 when publishers were struggling to monetise digital properties. My manager at the time looked after the largest portfolio of digital audiences in the market and gave me the coolest of jobs, going out to all the major agencies and brands to find out why they’re not spending more with us. I then used that information to better package our digital properties. A few years later the company broke even for the first time in 10 years - they invested heavily in digital - and the rest is history.
What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role?
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Clients who stick with traditional providers, without doing the due diligence to fairly compare with competitors, as it’s often easier to renew legacy contracts.
What’s the biggest industry-wide challenge you’d like to see tackled?
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Misinformation across the board, but especially with global enterprises operating in Australia and New Zealand who skirt the rules more effectively than local publishers. They don’t take ownership of the problem and if anything profit from it. I don’t believe the responsibility is only with those platforms but also with some brands who spend a large percentage of their digital budgets with them.
What are you most excited about in the next 12 months?
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Helping more brands and agencies in ANZ have better access to powerful insights that can give them a leg up on their competitors, as well as continuing to add new features and offerings to help these brands and agencies.
Who has been a great mentor to you and why?
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My brother. His career path to date has been nothing short of a rocket ship's trajectory! Hopefully, he has a safe landing? Not often an accountant becomes the youngest junior partner at a firm to later run the global project for digitising mining for BHP, and shortly after the CEO of a mining consultancy to improve efficiencies in that space. He has always made time for me and led by example.
Words of advice for someone wanting a job like yours?
- It’s difficult to find something you’re good at and even more difficult to find something you enjoy doing. Embrace the struggle as it will only make you more resilient in future. Once you find something you enjoy or are good at, keep pursuing it passionately.
If I wasn't doing this for a living, I'd be:
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Endless summer line of work! My mum had this dream of our family owning and running businesses in Greece, South Africa and Australia to have an endless summer.
My mantra is:
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Die young, as late as possible.
My favourite advert is (and why):
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Anheuser-Busch: Whassup ‘99. You can be silly and informal without ruffling feathers or going off-brand.
Music and TV streaming habits: what do you subscribe to?
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Netflix, Stan, YouTube Premium and Audible.
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?
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I am defending my NSW kitesurfing win from last year in a couple of weeks time.
In five years' time I'll be:
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Older… and either expanding the Pathmatics regional footprint or running an endless summer enterprise.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
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