Google has promoted Caroline Oates and Aaron Boekestein in a leadership shake up.
Oates, who had led YouTube’s advertising and programmatic sales in Australia and New Zealand for the past nine years has stepped up to become director of the agency and partners team in ANZ.
In her new role, Oates will lead Google’s commercial strategy and joint initiatives across media agencies, technology, and creative partners in Australia and New Zealand.
Oates’ new role had been held by Boekestein, who been promoted to lead Google’s newly unified regional organisation as managing director, agency and 3rd party ecosystems APAC. In this elevated regional role, Boekestein will oversee Google’s agency and partner network across Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore.
Boekestein previously led Google’s AuNZ ads partnerships team. During his tenure in AuNZ, Google said he spearheaded key growth and commercial frameworks, expanded the Google Honours program into Accelerate with Google Expert, and scaled Creator Marketing Partner coverage.
Having officially stepped into the regional role in early October, Boekestein’s appointment unites Google’s partner strategy across the Asia-Pacific region. Under this unified APAC structure, the AuNZ market will benefit directly from expanded regional support, including accelerated investment in partner enablement, specialised pre-sales engineering, and automated capability pathways.
“We are immensely proud to see our local leaders step up into new roles across AuNZ and APAC, and drive our continued commitment to our partners across the region,” said Mel Silva, MD and VP, Google Australia and New Zealand.
