This is an edited transcript of Media Tech Talk. Hosted by David Richards and Paul Luckett, with guest Amy Jansen-Flynn, Managing Director of Publift.
Key Takeaways
- Amy Jansen-Flynn's career path — from newspaper sales at News Corp, to CPC performance campaigns at REA Group, to running Adform's APAC business, to Managing Director of Publift — is grounded in a deliberate practice of working across disciplines rather than staying in one lane.
- The transition from working for one publisher (REA) to running a full-stack platform for 900+ publishers (Publift) is a step-change in both complexity and leverage: insights from one publisher can be adapted for the entire network, but the cautionary lesson is that what works for one doesn't automatically work for another.
- On staying relevant in a fast-moving market: read widely, don't believe everything, seek out polarising commentary to form a more rounded view, and invest heavily in relationships — particularly with people who've been in the trenches since the early days.
- Publift's culture is its most defensible asset: a "no one is too good for anything" ethos, a publisher-first focus, and an expectation that people come with opinions and expect to be challenged on them.
- Amy's personal framework for career success is disarmingly simple: be useful. In every context, in every room, at every level — if you're useful, opportunities follow.
Introductions: Who is Amy Jansen-Flynn, and what is Media Tech Talk?
David: G'day and welcome to Media Tech Talk. I'm David Richards.
Paul: And I'm Paul Luckett. The digital advertising market in Australia is worth more than $18 billion annually and uses automation, identity frameworks, and AI-driven optimisation. But as the ecosystem evolves, so does the complexity. For publishers, success is no longer about access to tools — it's about how you bring everything together to drive real performance. Today's guest has built her career across that entire ecosystem, from publisher monetisation at REA Group to leading a full-stack adtech platform across APAC at Adform, and now taking over as the head of Publift.
David: Amy Jansen-Flynn steps into a business that started from a $500-a-month client and scaled into a global publisher monetisation company supporting more than 900 publishers. So here's the question: what does it really take to step into a managing director role of a founder-led business, protect what made it successful, and still evolve Publift in a market that's changing faster than ever? Amy, welcome to the show. Where in Brisbane, Australia are you calling in from?
Amy: I am in my home in Ormiston, which is on the bay side of Brisbane.
David: Wonderful. It actually looks really lovely there today.
Amy: It's not too bad, yeah. A little bit of overcast but otherwise quite nice.
David: Awesome. Let's take a little step back and see what it was that got you into the digital media industry — around your inspirations and what was it that got you first into the industry.
How did Amy get her start — and what did selling CPC campaigns at REA teach her?
Amy: So interestingly, I actually started my media career working in newspapers for News Corp. I was 19 and I basically just bluffed my way into a sales job at Quest Community Newspapers, which is the community newspaper network in Southeast Queensland. And I spent five years working at News, and throughout that time I ended up working in national agency sales. And then the bright lights of digital called towards the end of 2010 and I moved over to REA — and I'd say that's where things really started to get interesting for me.
David: Was REA up in Brisbane for you as well?
Amy: It was, yeah. I actually started in a performance sales role. So before we had programmatic in Australia, that's how we used to make money out of ads — just selling, racking off CPC campaigns. And like, that's a really tough gig doing that. And I don't even know if that exists now today. But I think doing that job and trying to figure out how things work in order to get things to perform — that was really the foundation of my career. Because I realised when I was working there that I love complexity and I like having problems to solve and I like being able to define how things should work. And I was given that opportunity at REA, which was pretty cool.
David: Yeah. I remember back in the day of Fairfax Digital Media in sales — Jack Matthews as the CEO was famously on record for saying performance campaigns only work for the advertiser. I think there were so many impressions that they had to put out across the network to see where the engagement was from users. And then the poor guys in ad ops had to then track those and then apply campaigns based on the engagement. Really cumbersome process.
Amy: And then GAM brought in dynamic allocation and everything changed.
David: Yeah. Was that how it was when you were kicking off in your adtech's little space? Was it doing performance back then?
Paul: I don't think so. I don't remember that coming up. I mean, I started in 2011, and this was the days where we were still using Atlas Ad Manager — the older Windows 95 ad server, as I like to call it. And yeah, we were building a lot of our own rich media in-house. You had MediaMind and running iBlaster and all these other things that you had to install back in those days. And it was kind of fun — like, to your point around the complexity, it was quite complex and there were a lot of hacky solutions. You didn't have as many adtech companies out there that made a lot of these things simple. Times have changed, right? And then you had DFP and the migration across to DFP, which was a fun time. But yeah, I don't think we were — I mean, we were just getting into programmatic back then. I was setting up the very first programmatic networks. We were selling remnant at Telstra Advertising Network. So yeah, long time ago.
Amy: Good times. Love it.
David: Amy, back in those days with performance-based campaigns, as they were — were they hard to sell, like to try and convince advertisers to come on and try them out? Because it would have been quite experimental, I'd imagine.
Amy: I mean, it was a bit of a tough gig really, because I worked for REA and naturally there are advertiser sensitivities. So you weren't allowed to sell to any property or finance advertisers. So the pool of customers you could sell to was pretty limited. But I think the thing was that the selling was actually not that hard, because you build on delivery as long as conversions were coming through and all that kind of thing. The problem was the technical side — because you'd sell, I don't know, $20,000 of clicks, and then the direct sales team would have a bonkers month and there'd be no supply left. And so then you'd be like, yeah, well, I've sold 20 grand, but I'm not gonna get paid because I can't make it serve. And that's sort of how I learned how DFP — back in those days, how the ad server actually worked — and then learned how to make campaigns deliver, basically.
David: That's awesome. I remember there was a period when we were at Telstra Advertising Network — we had these inter-network deals where Telstra would buy inventory for audience extension on ninemsn, as it was back then. It was almost quite an accepted behavioural kind of business performance campaign to get those extended campaigns out there to get the reach. For that same reason, Amy, as you said, there just wasn't enough inventory on these publisher sites to support the performance-based campaigns that they needed to run.
Amy: Yeah, exactly.
What were the defining moments that shaped how Amy thinks about monetisation and building teams?
David: Now you've had a really strong journey across REA, Adform, and now Publift. Looking back, what were the defining moments that shaped how you think about media monetisation and building teams today?
Amy: This is a tough one. I'm not really sure I've had any defining moments as you say, but I've definitely had defining periods of time. And I've definitely been mostly driven by the people that I've been surrounded by during that time — and more often than not, whoever my leader happened to be. I've learned as much from the great leaders that I've had as I have from the really bad leaders that I've had. But I'd say the most challenging periods of my career are the ones that have defined how I choose to handle myself today. And I think — I don't want to say I'm fortunate for having challenging experiences, but you don't get better if everything's easy all the time.
Amy: I think too, I've been very fortunate to have worked across several different perspectives in the industry — buy side, sell side, data, tech. And within those, lots of different disciplines. I've been in sales, I've been in product, I've been an account manager, I've done ad ops, and now I'm in executive leadership. And I think what I've come to realise is that arrogance blinkers are just really dangerous — for you as a person in your own development, but also for the companies that you're working for. If you're not thinking outside of your immediate existence, you're doing your organisation a disservice.
David: Yeah, you've mentioned going into executive management. What's the secret to success to get into those types of roles — specifically for you and your use case, if you want.
Amy: That's tough. Secrets of success. I don't know if there is a secret. I just — I try to be really useful all the time. I think in whatever context you're in, whether someone needs development support, or someone needs help solving a product problem, or there's been some compliance risk that needs to be dealt with — I just think that if you're useful, opportunities will be afforded to you. I'm never one to sit back in a meeting and let things roll on and be a casual observer, because then you're not useful. I don't know — I don't think it's a terrible answer, but it's my secret.
David: I've heard some good stories about you going on panels with Luckett as well. Has that helped in your career progression?
Paul: Being on panels with me definitely helps much with progression, but being on panels in general, probably.
Amy: I do think — and I mean, this is probably easy to say and less easy to do — but I've just not been afraid to have an opinion about something, and I'll happily be proven wrong. If someone can present me with a good argument or reasoning to suggest that what I believe isn't true, I'll happily change my mind. But I think if you don't have an opinion in the first place, it's really difficult to enforce progress — because if there's no opinion, there's no direction. And I think that logic can be applied to anything. The hypothesis of an experiment essentially is an opinion. So I think people need to be actively aware of what their opinions are and not be afraid to have them, regardless of how weakly held they might be.
Paul: I think it kind of ties into the point you were making before around arrogance. After I left News Corp — having been there for nearly seven years — I always tried to make sure that I subverted my ego. But I didn't realise until after I left the company that, especially in the last 12 to 18 months there, I did kind of let myself develop too much of an ego. Having gone through the experiences now of doing some contracting work and starting my own business, it's been a very humbling experience. You have to be very mindful of that — and you're right, it can be a risk if you spend a long time in one place.
Amy: Yeah. Everyone needs to check their ego all the time.
David: I can't imagine either of you having an ego, really. You're too nice.
Amy: Oh, that's nice. There we go.
David: Got some points for that one.
How has working across sales, product, and executive roles shaped Amy's cross-discipline thinking?
Paul: So do you think that your experience having started out on the sales side really gave you an advantage moving into the more technical and product side of things?
Amy: Yes. I think any multi-discipline experience is always useful for the other. And something that I've always hired for — but in the size of an organisation like Publift, with around 100-ish people and very clearly defined functions and teams — it's very easy for those functions to operate in silos. Very easy for engineering to just say "we just code" and for sales to say "we just sell." But I think the best people are the people who are curious about other parts of the organisation. And so if you actually get the opportunity to work in different parts of the organisation, you get that information and build that empathy kind of by design.
Amy: So when I moved from sales into more of a product-oriented role and a salesperson would come to me to complain about something — it was like, I get it. I've sat there before and listened to the customer who's not happy with whatever. So I would say, absolutely. There are two sides to that coin: one is the empathy — understanding where other people are coming from and what their experience looks like. And the other is you can actually just solve a problem better if you understand the full mechanics of the things that will contribute to solving it.
Amy: When I joined Adform, it was a small team really isolated from the rest of the business in APAC. I started there as country manager for Australia and New Zealand, and then eventually ended up running all of APAC. But you can't just come in and show up to conferences and sit on panels and approve invoices and take people for lunch — that's not what the job is. When you do a job like that, you're everything to everyone. You're running customer success, you're technical solutions, you're pre-sale consulting, you're everything. And so you just can't be successful in environments like that unless you can be effective cross-discipline. I feel like I learned the foundations of my skills at REA, and then my time at Adform really put those skills through their paces.
Paul: I've always said, working in adtech on the publisher side, that you've got the commercial side of the business and the technology side of the business who are quite often at odds with each other. I always saw adtech's role as sitting in the middle of those two — because we were technology on one hand, but on the other side we were focused on revenue and commercial outcomes. We could speak to the commercial people and explain the tech stuff to them in a way that made sense. And then do the same backwards to the technology people. Now being a consultant, that's kind of what I'm focused on — not coming in and saying "I'm an adtech consultant," but rather: I'm a commercial strategy consultant, specifically where revenue and technology intersect for media businesses. And especially in 2026 with all the disruption happening in the media industry, publishers have got to really take a holistic view — or work with someone who can. I love what businesses like Publift are doing out there in the market because they can bring some of that to the table.
Amy: I like the way you described that — that intersection between technology and commercial outcomes. I don't know, I've never done anything else because I'm a media advertising native. But I just think — is there any other industry where you have that opportunity to do all this different stuff and have such an impact? That's what I love about adtech.
Paul: I've thought about that a lot as well, actually. When I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my career next, I was like: is there another industry I could take this experience to? And the closest thing I got to was FinTech. A little different though — but a lot of the stuff we do in adtech, every time we're making changes or building new things, there's a visual aspect to it. There's an output where you can actually see something. It's not just numbers on a dashboard. There is actually a website or a UI that you're building, something you can see. That was one of the things that got me into the adtech sector and the media industry originally 15 years ago — I could spend all this time building a product and then see it running across all the sites. I could show people. I'm like, I did that. There's a visual element to it that I don't think you get anywhere else.
Amy: I like that. Yes, I concur.
What does a day in the life of Amy Jansen-Flynn look like — and where is she focusing Publift's energy?
David: Amy, do you want to take us through what a normal day in the life of Amy Jansen-Flynn looks like for you?
Amy: Wow, yeah. I mean, no day is the same. I've got two little kids, so my day always starts with school drop-off. In daylight savings times, my day usually starts with about two hours of meetings from six till eight, then school drop-off, then back — because I have direct reports in Europe. But this time of year, it's really quite pleasant. My days start after school drop-off at nine, which is nice.
Amy: And I spend as much time as I can, honestly, talking to both the people that I'm responsible for and the people who are really critical to the success of Publift's business — the senior leadership team, but also key partners that enable our success and key customers that are really important. I'm a textbook extrovert, so I achieve the most when I'm talking to somebody. If you ask my daughter what I do for a living, she says "you sit on your computer and talk to your friends."
Amy: But yeah, for me, at least in the last six months — once I got my seat warm at Publift and had a bit of a clue on what we needed to do — I'm spending most of my time figuring out how we can manage the impact of AI and also leverage it for the future. I know it sounds like a cop-out, like every bloody LinkedIn post is slopping around with that at the moment. But for me, in the way that I'm thinking about the business, it's absolutely true. Everything that we're doing — we're considering the implications of that thing in an AI-driven future.
David: And I imagine it must be quite a circus — in a positive sense — in terms of the amount of things going on at any one time. How do you keep yourself up to speed with everything? As a business leader, you're also a thought leader, you're building out the culture, you're staying ahead of the market.
Amy: I read a lot. And I don't believe a lot. I put a lot of energy into wading through all the guff — there are 10 press releases a day that say the same thing and every now and then you'll get an interesting one. I quite like the commentary that some of those more high-profile industry journalists kick around. I like to read things that are a little bit polarising because it just helps me form a more well-rounded position. I read a lot. I talk to a lot of people. The value in the relationships that I have with people in the industry just cannot be quantified. That camaraderie between people who've been in the trenches from the early days and are now running big businesses — the value in being able to call on those people and go, "what do you think about this?" — yeah, phenomenal. I value that so much.
What was the transition like taking over Publift from founder Colm Doyle — and what makes the culture special?
David: I thought we might have a look at the transition. You had Colm, who has been on the show, talk about how he started Publift. It must have been interesting at the time to understand and get into the business from a founder. How did you find that transition when you joined the business to take it over from Colm?
Amy: So, firstly, Colm — what a bloody legend. I love that guy. And I want to say it's such a privilege to take a business that he and Tobin built and then lead it. I was on the sidelines of Publift when it was founded and then as it grew over the years, and it's been such a remarkable journey. And so to then come in to run Publift, it's a little bit surreal. But I'd say the transition has been wonderful. Colm wasn't out the door the day I started or anything like that. We spent a lot of time together and he was hugely involved in my interview process, because it was important to him that they found the right person for the business.
Amy: And I would say the transition has probably been as seamless as it could have been. Naturally there are bits and pieces of things that need to be ironed out. But coming in — obviously there's business strategy and all of the things that need to be sorted out — but people at Publift always talk about the culture and how special it is. I heard about the Publift culture from my friends that worked there over the years, and we talked about it throughout my interview process. I thought I understood what that meant. But it wasn't until I joined the business and actually became part of that culture that I really got it. And now I'm one of those people on the inside talking about the great culture without actually being able to articulate it well. But I think that's what makes Publift really special. It's a real credit to Colm and Tobin for being able to nurture that culture over the years, and then also ensure that the culture was resilient through the leadership change.
David: Is it around the empowerment, collaboration, the sharing and openness of information — breaking down some of those stereotypical hierarchical ways businesses operate?
Amy: Yeah. I think there's just this feeling that no one is too good for anything. We're just here to get it done. Yes, people have different roles and responsibilities, but at the end of the day, the culture just comes back to the publisher. We just want to do what's best for the publisher — so all of the people surrounding that inside Publift, everybody leans into that in every way that they can. And then all the hygiene stuff — people are just kind to each other and polite, and we have this vast array of different personality types and cultures, and that's really leaned into and supported.
Amy: But I think the other thing is that we're also not afraid to argue and disagree with each other — respectfully, always. But come with your opinion and expect to be challenged on it. And I think that's expected at Publift. People just know that that's how it goes. And the people that really fit in at Publift and stay — they get that and they love it, because they know it makes them better.
What is the fundamental mindset shift between working for one publisher versus a thousand?
Paul: Having worked across the different areas of the ecosystem — from publisher to more of a platform business — what in your opinion are some of the fundamental changes in how you think about these businesses and the market?
Amy: Good question. Are you talking about what it's like to work for one publisher versus a thousand publishers?
Paul: Yeah, one way of putting it.
Amy: Okay. So I'll just rewind — when I was at REA, you've got kind of one use case. You're focused on one single business and that business's priorities. And then I went to Adform, and yes, Adform is full stack and we had all different types of customers, but ultimately everything comes back to the same technology stack. So whatever you're doing, you're isolated to what that technology can offer and what it's capable of. And now I'm at Publift and it's kind of like this explosion of opportunity, because we have our own technology, we work with nearly every tech vendor in the market in some way, shape or form. We work with publishers and then, by design, we work with advertisers because they buy our supply. And I think this is why I love the job so much — I love the intersection of all of those things.
Amy: What you get when you're in an environment like Publift is just so much more information, because you have access to so much information. So if you're running comparative analysis on something, you're not just REA going: "if I switch out these bidders or make these ad units sticky, what impact is that going to have on my business?" You can learn from one publisher and adapt for another. You get a much more well-rounded view of all the market dynamics — how those dynamics vary across different markets, different publisher types, different bidder types, different advertisers. So it's more complicated, but by design, it's more powerful. And your ability to influence progress is more significant. I think there is a cautionary tale in that — what works for one may not work for another. Adapting a monetisation strategy for one publisher is one thing, and figuring out how you can learn from that for the benefit of the entire network is another. At Publift, we're really focused on doing that. We don't wash, rinse, and repeat. We learn and adapt.
David: No, we're still here. Just listening. Just internally taking notes on you.
Amy: My window just disappeared on me there, sorry.
David: We're still here. That's okay. Did I answer your question?
Paul: Yes.
David: Sort of — no, it's good! Because look, Paul and I have obviously worked in publisher networks — that's how we first met 15 years ago. And the representation part of owning the responsibility for publishers here in Australia who are overseas — that was a big deal to us. At one point we had 80 different publishers that we were representing, along with the Telstra Advertising Network, which included Telstra Bigpond, AFL, and NRL Digital Rights as well. There's a lot of responsibility. And you're right — in the quick swing that you have to do in representing publishers, because at the time these were mum and dads. People who were absolutely proficient in doing business — the acumen was amazing. But there are also people who've been doing digital for a long time, representing sites like NBC as an example. So you've got to have a sense of empathy to be able to switch between the people with little to no knowledge and experience — because you suddenly become their conduit for information, to help guide them through market trends and technology solutions.
Amy: Yeah. And I think we have a really broad spectrum of customers — small customers that don't know anything about adtech and just want us to do everything for them, all the way up to our large enterprise publishers like Rightmove in the UK and Carsales here in Australia. The demands of those different businesses are completely different. Something we're working on now is figuring out how we differentiate the service design for different types of publishers, because not everyone wants the same thing. Our customer success team does just an impeccable job of doing that on instinct at the moment. But we've got this really cool opportunity ahead of us to define that a little bit more cleanly, so that all of our customers get an even better experience than they do today.
What's next — Part 2 preview
David: Next on Media Tech Talk, part two of our special series with Publift's Managing Director, Amy Jansen-Flynn. We break down what really drives growth and why chasing the wrong signals is holding publishers back. We dive into identity, experimentation, and how AI is accelerating everything faster than most businesses can keep up. What makes Publift stand out from the crowd when it comes to monetisation solutions for over 900 publishers? Join us for the conversation that's inspiring media minds. That's next on Media Tech Talk.
This is an edited transcript of Media Tech Talk, Part 1. The words are David, Paul, and Amy's own — lightly edited for readability (filler words, false starts, typos, punctuation). No claims have been rewritten or generated by AI.