Japan runs on trust. While programmatic quietly powers ad spend across the West, it still accounts for barely 10% of investment here, a gap Alex Olmedo has spent more than 18 months trying to close as GM of Equativ Japan. His bet: find the brands bold enough to break from the status quo, co-create a first case with them, then scale what works.

The real solution lives in the people behind the tech stack: credible enough to be trusted, patient enough to educate rather than push, and resilient enough to stay the course in a market built on resistance to change.