Dentsu Aegis closes Amplifi in Australia and folds it into its media agencies
Dentsu Aegis Network is closing Amplifi, its media innovation and investment division, in Australia as it continues to restructure across Asia Pacific.
Amplifi, which was launched in Australia in 2014, consolidates DAN’s media trading and investment management.
In response to The Drum’s queries, a spokesperson confirmed the news and said Amplifi will be reintegrated back into the DAN media brands in the coming months.
Amplifi, which was launched in Australia in 2014, consolidates DAN’s media trading and investment management, and forms media partnerships. It also works with DAN’s programmatic buying agency, Amnet and content marketing agency, The Story Lab.
DAN previously announced it will split its APAC business into three clusters which will be named Greater North, Greater South and ANZ.
Greater North will consist of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, Greater South will include India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar and ANZ will consist of Australia and New Zealand.
The split saw the network promoted Ashish Bhasin to the chief executive officer of the expanded region of Greater South, tasked Takaki Hibino to oversee Greater North in the interim, in addition to his role leading the regional business and retained Henry Tajer to lead the ANZ business.
That meant that Phil Teeman, the former DAN Singapore and South East Asia chief executive, Rob Hughes, the former DAN North Asia chief executive and DAN China chief executive Susana Tsui all exited the business.
Sunil Yadav, the former president for APAC at Amplifi, Kristian Barnes, the former chief client officer, and media chairman at DAN, and Sean O’Brien, the former chief executive of Posterscope and MKTG, also departed.
Before the restructure happened, the network announced that Nick Waters, who was the chief executive of APAC, will depart to take on the role of executive chairman for the UK and Ireland.
DAN then promoted Audrey Kuah to the role executive director of media business for APAC, on top of her current responsibilities as managing director of the network’s Global Data Innovation Centre.