This month we spoke to Melissa Francisco, our Head of Sales for Southeast Asia. Melissa is originally from the Philippines, but is based in our Singapore office, whilst also making frequent trips to our Jakarta office and to Malaysia and the Philippines. Hear what Melissa has to say about performance marketing in Southeast Asia.

It has been great so far. Have met a lot of exceptional people, who became not just merely acquaintances/colleagues but lifetime friends as well. It was truly a challenging experience coming from the opposite side of digital advertising, I need to unlearn things to learn. Although given the background, understanding and network, it has helped me a lot in getting my Optimise’ foot in the door.

Performance Marketing has changed quite a lot during my time at Optimise especially in SEA. Merchants and Agencies were merely focused in DSPs. Merchants and Publishers were not really aware of who Optimise is or what affiliate marketing means. Now, markets like Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam are aware that there’s more to performance marketing than just merely bidding platforms.

I can’t say that I have truly achieved that level of success in my career, as I know there’s still a lot more that I need to learn and can accomplish. But the road to where I am right now was really tough, given I am a mother of 2 teenagers. I need to always find the balance between being a career woman and a mother. And I must admit, there were several occasions when I question myself if what I am doing at work and as a mother enough?

It has always been my kids and being able to give them the best life I can possibly give.

Explaining to my kids what I do is easy as both are very much familiar with online shopping, gaming, mobile apps. Would normally just tell them that what I do is to help online shopping sites/apps to get users like them to purchase or play.

I can’t say for everybody, but I think the main barrier preventing women like me from being able to advance in performance marketing is women are expected to take up more family responsibilities than men which is especially true here in Asia. In addition to this is the perception about the challenges associated with competing work-life priorities also arises.

I think the only thing I want to change is our responsiveness to adopt, since we are in an industry where it is consistently developing and changing.

Being a woman is difficult! People around you will always say NO or you can’t do it or you can’t do both. Career & Motherhood, will not go easier in time. In fact, difficulty increases as you progress on both. You just have to always fight for what you want and work your ass off each and every single day. What matters most is that you get things done no matter what, as that alone is a reward itself. Just stay focused on where you want to go, it may take time but eventually, you’ll reach where you want to be.