Mobile app advertising, monetization, and insights company Liftoff is bringing together inspirational women from across the mobile industry to share their stories. In this series, we’ll explore their achievements, the challenges they’ve overcome, and their vision for the future — offering insights from the experts shaping the world of mobile apps and technology. This month’s article focuses on Nanami Takahashi, JP Programmatic Ad Manager at SmartNews.
Can you start by walking us through your career path—how did you get to where you are today?
My career started in a different industry. I was a Financial Data Provider at Bloomberg. That might be a surprise since most people know Bloomberg as a news outlet, but its main business is financial data analysis. I spent around three years at Bloomberg, but eventually, I wanted to move closer to the media side of things. That’s why I transferred to Reuters, where I became an Account Manager.
I first became familiar with SmartNews as a client at Reuters. However, my current role with them didn’t come until much later. After Reuters, I moved to Amazon, where I took my first steps in programmatic advertising. At the time, I was pretty unfamiliar with ad tech, and I didn’t know anything about impressions or CPMs, and it was a formative learning experience.
After four years, I seized an opportunity to join Google and work in ad sales, which was exciting and challenging. While there, my personal life changed—I gave birth to twin boys. At that point, it was really important for me to work at a company that values and prioritizes work-life balance, which ultimately led me to my current role at SmartNews.
How would you describe your role at SmartNews?
My job is to expand SmartNews’s programmatic business in Japan, which means that I handle both business development and the job of a programmatic manager.
Compared to the US, programmatic is a smaller, relatively new area of ad tech in Japan. There aren’t many people in the region with the necessary skillsets. For example, I am bilingual and can talk directly with product managers and engineers abroad in Japanese and English.
What is SmartNews, and who are your users?
SmartNews is a widely popular news aggregation app in Japan and the United States, designed to help people discover high-quality, trustworthy news from various sources. The app is for everyone, and our user base is diverse. Some users only read news casually, some are deeply engaged in news cycles, and some just want a simple way to find credible, real-time information about topics that interest them.
What inspired you to pursue a career in the app/mobile industry?
I never intended to enter the apps and the mobile industry. It happened naturally. Web advertising has been shrinking for quite a long time now, and that was becoming apparent at the beginning of my career, so when the opportunity came to engage with programmatic advertising, it seemed like a logical step forward.
Have you faced difficulties in your career, and how have you navigated them?
I encounter challenges every day because programmatic is constantly changing. New products, features, and technologies come from different directions—platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon or companies on the demand side like DSPs.
On the one hand, it’s great because there’s always something new and interesting for me to learn, but on the other hand, working with cutting-edge technologies can create a lot of challenges because there’s not a lot of information to help you when you encounter difficulties.
How has your career path shaped the way you solve problems today?
My experience is unique and balanced because I’ve been on both the demand and supply sides. When I was at Amazon DSP, I learned about the advertiser’s perspective—the demand side, all the metrics advertisers care about, and the difficulties of running ad campaigns across many media and platforms. On the supply side, I learned about the nuances of working with publishers. Having these two different perspectives helps me keep an open mind as I deal with day-to-day challenges.
How do you assess the value and success of a partnership in the context of mobile advertising?
Before I joined the company, SmartNews only had big platforms connected to its programmatic advertising in Japan. But now, SmartNews works with about 15 different partners, including both SSPs and DSPs in Japan and platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
Having a variety of partners is valuable for all publishers, as it helps keep you up to speed on market trends.
What are some key trends you’re observing in mobile advertising partnerships?
Many partners are asking us to implement a wider variety of ad formats, such as rewarded videos and interstitial ads because programmatic is centralized in the US market. Many new technologies and ad formats are coming from that region, and global partners are eager to see those innovations make their way to Japan.
We noticed this trend in video and premium video content. PMP deals like Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) and Preferred Deals (PD) are a hot topic for us. Beyond open auctions, we engage in conversations around Private Marketplaces (PMPs) directly with DSPs and with SSPs that can connect us to demand sources interested in SmartNews inventory or news media packages.
What are some common barriers women still face in the industry?
Gender representation is still a challenge in most tech companies. As women, we often find ourselves in the minority. There’s pressure to fit into a male-dominated work culture, to think and operate the way men do. It’s an adjustment we frequently have to make as women in tech and business more broadly. I’d like to see more companies provide reassurances so that women can feel secure taking time to focus on their personal lives.
Have you had any mentors or role models who have particularly inspired or supported you in your career journey as a woman in this industry?
Yes and no. I’ve had two mentors who played a big role in shaping my career. They’re about eight years older than me, and were the ones who first introduced me to the programmatic advertising industry. They supported my career growth and referred me to roles at Amazon and Google, where they worked.
The only issue is that both of them are men, and I still really wish I had a female mentor or role model to look up to who is balancing both a successful career and personal life. That said, in Japan, there are a handful of organizations and communities where women from different parts of the ad tech ecosystem come together to support one another and highlight female role models we can admire and learn from, even if they’re hard to find.
What advice would you give to women looking to build a successful career in the industry?
In our industry, many women hesitate to speak up about technical questions because they worry they’ll be seen as “ignorant.” But you should never hesitate to ask questions. If you doubt yourself, think about the tasks you know how to do well. Maybe you’re really good at driving projects forward or building strong relationships with partners. Whatever you do, trust yourself and forge ahead.
