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.
Melanie Hoptman: APAC COO at LiveRamp
Time in current role:
I’ve been the COO of APAC for LiveRamp for more than five years.
How would you describe what the company does?
LiveRamp is the data collaboration platform of choice for many innovative companies. We offer complete flexibility for companies to collaborate wherever data lives to support the widest range of data collaboration use cases. Hundreds of global innovators, from iconic consumer brands and tech giants to banks, retailers, and healthcare leaders turn to LiveRamp to build enduring brand and business value.
Critically, we’re helping companies to find ways to address the loss of identifiers and signals, the continued dominance of walled gardens, and regulatory changes and a heightened focus on privacy.
What do you do day-to-day?
I oversee the Australia P&L, and in parallel lead operations for APAC - one of LiveRamp’s fastest-growing regions - amidst LiveRamp’s deepening focus on leveraging its relationships with its premier global ecosystem.
Define your job in one word:
Dynamic.
I got into my industry because:
Having worked at tech-adjacent companies earlier in the internet era, I got a sense for where the transformative potential of data was headed.
Now, we can clearly see how much data matters. Consider your consumer touchpoints, and connect the constellation of touchpoints for every customer and multiply that by millions of customers, you can see the scale of how powerful first-party data is becoming. When we bring together our customers every year at our global event, RampUp, we can see how sophisticated our customers and partners have become at using their data, and how they’re clearly realizing their results and visions for data.
What’s the biggest industry wide challenge you’d like to see tackled?
Many companies fear interoperability in the advertising ecosystem because they think that among other things, it will lead to their customers walking away. But in reality, not only does avoiding interoperability prevent their customers from making the truly transformative gains that data is enabling for us all, but also holding the broader ecosystem back from further progress.
We believe in having a premier global ecosystem of partners in order to give our customers the scale and reach that they need to drive enduring brand and business value.
On the flip side of this, being connected and interoperable with the ecosystem leads to connecting with every customer touchpoint, enabling better measurement, and in turn, better outcomes. As an industry, we need to evolve to measurement that matters, moving beyond clicks and impressions to journey analytics, closed-loop measurement, and revenue impact. Transparency around performance - especially given the current economic climate - will deepen relationships between brands and publishers, and enable business leaders to make informed and sophisticated decisions around spend.
Previous companies:
I’m grateful to have been at LiveRamp and Axciom combined for longer than 10 years, which has been the vast majority of my relevant experience. Prior to Axciom, I held positions at FujiXerox and Expedia.
Notable campaigns/initiatives:
Something that I’m responsible for, and have been vocal about at LiveRamp, is helping to bring the Australian digital advertising ecosystem forward while also driving LiveRamp’s Australian growth, specifically.
I’ve helped LiveRamp to build key partnerships across the Australian ecosystem. I’ve also secured and had the privilege of working with the biggest advertisers in Australia across retail and industry sectors, and I’m very excited about what the near term holds for our team here.
We’ve got a great local team, and I’d venture that everyone either knows one of the team, or knows someone who does. And we’re always happy to share more with the ecosystem about how we do what we do.
Who has been a great mentor to you?
Frederic Jouve, the LiveRamp APAC MD, has been a phenomenal mentor and coach. He has a thirst for knowledge, an entrepreneurial spirit and works under the philosophy that people grow when working out of their comfort zones. This has resulted in loads of opportunities for me.
Words of advice:
People matter -- give before you take and ask before you tell.
If I wasn’t doing this for a living, I'd be:
Ahhhh, tricky question! Honestly, I would own a small espresso bar in the northern beaches and probably work a small morning shift of 6am - 1pm, then spend the afternoon with my two gorgeous kids!
My philosophy is:
I’ve always loved this quote from the famous tennis player Billie Jean King: “Pressure is a privilege - it only comes to those who earn it.”
My favourite advert is:
Without a doubt, the 2007 Cadbury Dairy Milk advert when the gorilla drums to Phil Collins. Absolutely legendary.
Music and TV streaming habits. What do you subscribe to?
Netflix, Disney+, Stan (hello Yellowstone), NineNow (MAFS guilty pleasures) and Spotify.
In five years time, I'll be:
It’s an exciting time in the Australian ecosystem, but the same is absolutely true of so many APAC markets. We’ve come so far even in just the last five years that it’s near-impossible to make a prediction for 2028 - but I do know that I want to be in the thick of this vibrant time and spanning the entire region’s maturation.
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