Managing Director, Humphrey Ho Discusses the Future of Adtech in China
I had the pleasure of interviewing Humphrey Ho, Managing Director of Hylink USA, China’s largest digital advertising agency — now with international headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif. Humphrey is focused on building the first global advertising agency that natively understands the Chinese digital landscape and the burgeoning group of Chinese companies seeking to go abroad. Prior to founding Hylink USA, Humphrey served as Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai’s Business Director and Leagas Delaney’s Business Operations Director, and is also a former “Xoogler” — previously serving as Strategic Partnerships Leader at Google China.
Chris: Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory” of how you become involved in the adtech or digital media space?
“I joined Weiden+Kennedy Shanghai right at the time when big advertising ideas were going completely digital. So, all of our big ideas had to apply to Chinese social media platforms such as Wechat and Weibo, which have since taken over. However, Adtech wasn’t really a ‘thing’ for me until I started at Google, where I had the privilege of handling our data partnerships with China publishers.”
Chris: What do you think is the most interesting thing that has happened to the industry thus far?
“Advanced tag management for users. It went from giving hundreds of hard data points on users, to tens of thousands of contextual data points based on user behavior. It was an industry game-changer.”
Chris: What are your “5 things you think will change or should change over the next 5 years in adtech and digital publishing” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
“AI in Big Data Management. China sits on more mobile, social, and user data than any nation in the world. We foresee, and are investing in, companies that leverage AI to mine user behavior data in real time.
AI in Ad Serving. Tag management, as I happened earlier, was a major shift — but that happened five years ago. What will will be even more fascinating to watch unfold, is that once we can parse user data with AI, we can begin to ‘suggest’ to Adtech platform operators whether our user targeting and contextual targeting behaviour is accurate. Marketers still go through and read reports, then brief agencies annually on their findings. Now, the ad-serve platform can intelligently recommend to ad-desk operators what their targeting should be now, and can recommend urgent optimization strategies.
Micro-Content. Ultra-short form content that’s between 60–180 seconds long will dominate in China and beyond. It’s already started, really.
PGC vs. UGC. The lines are really blurring now between Professionally-Generated Content versus User-Generated Content in China. This is because the 300 million live-streamers in the country have upped their games. Many have turned their follower base into multi-million dollar platforms, combining the trend of micro-content and smartphones with professional-grade optics into everything from travel blogs, product reviews, to even their own shows. PGC will therefore move beyond multi-channel platforms and into brands, which will create content with these innovators creating the impactful UGC.
CPS (Cost Per Sale). Publishers will begin to adjust to advertiser requirements in an effort to ensure their platforms can justify ROI by having advertising revenue directly tied to a hard results metric. This means that publishers (and their agencies) will have to work harder in re-defining branded campaigns, so there will always be a transaction that can justify further spending.”
Chris: Tell us something you or your company is doing to stay up to date in adtech (maybe making changes to comply with Better Ads Standards or GDPR, working on your header bidding stack or testing new types of ads)
“Hylink co-founded the CMRC (China Media Rating Council) last year, and we’ve been a long term partner of the China IAB. We, along with Tencent, P&G, Publicis Group, and our other CMRC co-founders, are committed to standardizing ad formats, creating programmatic transparency, reducing ad fraud, and creating new mobile and video ad-serving technologies.”
Chris: Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?
“I’d love to have a meal with Warren Buffett. He taught me to think outside of our industry’s transactional nature, and how wealth can lead to diversification rather than debt-financing everything and selling in a hot-second. I also subscribe to his belief that we should be resistant of greed. He’s given me a lot of courage in our fast-paced industry.”
