PubMatic Melbourne office expansion targets Australia's A$5.4 billion video market
PubMatic has opened a new office in Melbourne, Australia, to bolster its support for local agencies and brands focusing on connected TV (CTV) and programmatic advertising. The expansion is driven by significant growth in the Australian video advertising market, which reached A$5.4 billion in 2025.
Key Takeaways
- Video advertising now represents 29% of total online advertising investment in Australia.
- Luke Smith, Senior Director for CTV APAC, will lead the regional video strategy from the new Melbourne location.
- Nearly 70% of independent agencies expect CTV and BVOD spending to increase by up to 25% in the next fiscal year.
- The expansion targets a growing independent agency sector where 70% of firms plan to hire in FY26.
Why It Matters
The establishment of a physical presence in Melbourne signals a shift toward localized support for increasingly complex programmatic and CTV workflows. As video advertising captures nearly a third of Australia's digital spend, ad tech providers must move beyond remote service to manage sophisticated broadcaster video on demand (BVOD) and big-screen integrations. This expansion places PubMatic in direct proximity to a growing independent agency sector that is aggressively pivoting toward streaming environments. Watch for whether this localized model prompts competitors to decentralize their Australian operations away from Sydney-centric hubs to capture regional agency growth.
Additional Context
PubMatic's Melbourne expansion arrives as the ad tech vendor intensifies its global CTV infrastructure buildout. In March 2026, PubMatic reported that its CTV revenue grew 31% year over year in Q4 2025, driven by increased demand from streaming platforms and broadcaster video-on-demand partners seeking programmatic monetization. The company has also expanded its partnerships with major streaming services across Asia-Pacific, positioning its Connect platform as a unified solution for addressable and programmatic CTV buying. This Melbourne office represents the latest step in a strategy that has seen PubMatic open or expand offices in Singapore, Tokyo, and Mumbai over the past 18 months to capture regional CTV growth.
The Australian CTV market itself is attracting significant investment from competing ad tech platforms. In June 2026, The Trade Desk announced a dedicated Australian CTV team based in Sydney, citing double-digit growth in programmatic CTV spend from local broadcasters including Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment. Meanwhile, IAB Australia's 2025 Digital Ad Spend Report found that CTV and BVOD advertising grew 24% year over year, outpacing overall digital growth and drawing new entrants into the market. PwC's entertainment and media outlook separately projected Australian CTV ad revenue would surpass A$1.2 billion by 2027, reinforcing the commercial case for localized ad tech support.
On the technical side, PubMatic has been investing in identity and measurement capabilities that directly serve CTV buyers in fragmented markets like Australia. In May 2026, PubMatic launched its Identity Hub in the Asia-Pacific region, integrating first-party data signals from broadcasters and publishers to enable deterministic and probabilistic matching without relying on third-party cookies. The company's Activate platform, which powers real-time bidding for CTV inventory, processed over 400 billion daily ad requests globally as of Q1 2026, according to its investor disclosures. For Australian agencies managing BVOD campaigns across multiple broadcasters, these tools reduce the operational complexity of programmatic CTV buying, a factor that likely influenced PubMatic's decision to place engineers and account teams directly in Melbourne's growing independent agency cluster.
Read full article at marketech-apac.com
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