Singapore Media Exchange Pte. Ltd.

Who owns Singapore Media Exchange?
SMX is owned 50/50 by Mediacorp and SPH Media as an equity joint venture. The SPH stake transferred to SPH Media Trust during the 2021 media restructuring.

Is Singapore Media Exchange publicly traded?
No. It is a private limited company with only its two parent companies as shareholders.

What does Singapore Media Exchange do?
It operates a premium programmatic advertising marketplace that pools the digital ad inventory of Singapore's two largest media groups, letting advertisers buy brand-safe inventory across both through one platform.

When was Singapore Media Exchange founded?
The venture was announced in August 2017 and became operational on 8 May 2018 under founding CEO Hari Shankar.

Does SMX own any media brands?
No. It is a business-to-business advertising marketplace. The media brands belong to its two parent companies.

Why was SMX created?
Both publishers were losing digital advertising share to Google and Facebook. Pooling inventory and audience data gave them local scale and a brand-safe alternative to offer advertisers.

Mediacorp and Singapore Press Holdings signed a memorandum of understanding on 7 August 2017 to create a joint programmatic advertising marketplace, a response to the erosion of their traditional ad revenues by global platforms. The model drew on publisher cooperatives elsewhere, including New Zealand's Kiwi Premium Advertising Exchange and the Pangaea Alliance of international news brands.

After a six-month technology review, the partners selected AppNexus to power the exchange and Lotame to unify audience data across the coalition. SMX officially launched operations on 8 May 2018 under founding CEO Hari Shankar, with Roger Moy of SPH as chair and Julian Tan of SPH's digital division as a founding director.

Early operation focused on consolidating supply: mapping each publisher's inventory into standardized packages and convincing agency buyers to route budgets through the exchange rather than direct buys. The venture expanded to include additional premium publishers interested in a brand-safe alternative to the open web.

Through the 2020s SMX added video and connected TV inventory as Mediacorp's meWATCH streaming grew, and incorporated SPH Media's properties after the 2021 restructuring made SPH Media the successor shareholder in the JV. As of 2026 it remains the primary premium programmatic channel for reaching Singapore consumers across the two groups' combined properties.

SMX has no significant public controversy. Competition regulators have not challenged the joint venture despite the owners' dominant media positions, treating it as a response to global platform dominance rather than a collusion risk. Critics of Singapore's concentrated media ownership note the JV further aligns the country's two largest publishers commercially, though both remain editorially separate entities.