Multi-Market Performance Marketing at Enterprise Scale
$16M
Peak Annual Budget
21
Person Team Built
6
Countries Managed
2,000+
Campaigns / Month
2. Context
Company: ADA Global (Axiata Digital) — a leading APAC performance marketing agency, $550M valuation, SoftBank-backed. Ranked Adweek's 35th fastest-growing global agency (2022). The Dhaka hub managed operations across South & Southeast Asia, coordinating with Global HQ in Singapore and Malaysia.
My role: Progressed from Manager (Aug 2021) to Lead (May 2023) within 2 years. Managed enterprise clients including Robi Axiata, Airtel, Nagad (10M+ users), BD Tickets, and Supermom across Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Singapore, and Philippines.
Scale: At peak, $16M annual budget, 21-person team (strategy, planning, buying, optimization, measurement, reporting), 2,000+ campaigns per month across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and DSPs.
3. Challenge
Enterprise clients with 7-figure MAU apps demanded growth in mature markets where easy gains had already been captured. Each country — Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Singapore, Philippines — had different regulatory requirements, cultural contexts, platform availability, and competitive dynamics. At 2,000+ campaigns per month, manual optimization was impossible. The challenge was building systems that scale across geographies while maintaining local relevance — and doing it with a team I had to recruit, train, and structure from scratch.
4. Approach
- Team building from zero: Recruited and trained a 21-person team spanning strategy, planning, buying, optimization, measurement, and reporting. Established the Digital Media School — a training program that developed 30+ planners and buyers across 12 markets, directly solving a talent crisis that was limiting growth.
- Measurement infrastructure: Led Kochava MMP implementation for 2 telecom brands, driving 4.7% combined conversion growth. Implemented end-to-end tracking: app SDK, Meta CAPI, Facebook Pixel, Firebase SDK, GA4, GTM across all clients.
- Systematic optimization at scale: Built an aggregated campaign tracker for KPI pacing and underperformance detection across all clients. Created automated Looker Studio dashboards. Identified that 23% of app uninstalls came from generic push notifications — contextual replacements significantly reduced churn.
- Alternative channel innovation: Negotiated OEM pre-install deals with Huawei and Walton, plus CPI/revenue-share deals with IMO and Viber via Eskimi DSP — generating 11% incremental installs from non-standard channels.
- Platform partnerships: Partnered directly with Meta and Google APAC teams for brand and conversion lift studies — not through intermediaries.
Markets Covered
5. Results
| Metric | Result | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Budget managed | $16M/year at peak | Across 4 markets, one of the largest performance portfolios from a South Asian hub |
| Team built | 21 people from scratch | Recruited, trained, structured — not inherited |
| MAU growth | 7%+ quarterly | For apps already at 7-figure MAU — growth at this scale is hard |
| Revenue growth | 6%+ quarterly | Direct revenue impact from marketing |
| Nagad digital sales | 6.5% growth | For an MFS brand with 10M+ users — massive in absolute terms |
| New business won | $200K/year | 4–5 media pitches won across APAC |
| Revenue from acquisition roadmaps | $1.2M annual | Data-led digital strategies generating measurable new revenue |
| New verticals launched | 2 B2C verticals, 10K+ users each in <90 days | Ability to launch from zero, not just optimize existing |
| CPI reductions | 4–19%+ | Progressive optimization through dynamic creatives and audience refinement |
| ASO impact | Store CTR +22%, install-to-open +17% | Store Listing Experiments and Custom Product Page optimization |
| Industry awards | Gold BBF · Silver BBF · 2x DRUM Awards | Best Ad Ops SEA + Best Paid Search — two DRUM Awards in the same year |
6. Key Learnings
Enterprise scale teaches process; startup scale teaches resourcefulness. At ADA, I learned that at 2,000+ campaigns per month, you need systems — campaign trackers, naming conventions, automated dashboards, training programs — because no individual can manually optimize at that volume. These are the exact systems I later applied, in miniature, at Shikho.
Multi-market operations require both local depth and global coordination. A campaign that works in Dhaka may fail in Colombo. The skill isn't running campaigns — it's building frameworks flexible enough to accommodate local context while maintaining consistent measurement and reporting across all markets.