GumGum hasn’t been in the Australian market for very long. However, in 2026 GumGum’s chief revenue officer, Katy Loria told B&T that the Land Down Under is a “real growth market” for the contextual advertising company.
That optimism is underpinned by Australia’s outsized per capita media spend, which continues to punch above its weight globally.
“It’s [Australia] a smaller country, but the per capita media is very impressive. I think of Australia as being a mature market and very innovative. This market really leans in and as a result they’re early adapters to a lot of things,” said Loria.
Australia may be significantly smaller than the US in population, but each consumer carries outsized media value in terms of spend, exposure and willingness to experiment. Driven by a dense and highly competitive media landscape that forces brands to innovate faster.
Loria’s point is backed up by We Are Social’s Digital 2026: Australia report, which ranks the nation third overall in digital ad spend, reaching USD $769 per person (AUD $1,108) and USD $568 (AUD $819) per internet user.
And even though the US outranks all nations with a per capita spend of USD $1,327 (AUD $1913), it’s the fact that GumGum and Loria “sees gained traction in the Australian market before anywhere else in the world”. Making the Land Down Under a “satellite market” that is “very important to GumGum’s growth.”
This is best illustrated by the global launch of Attentive Lift late last year. Developed in partnership with brand lift measurement company On Device, the solution gives advertisers clearer insight into the relationship between attention and brand performance, backed by third-party verification.
This was launched globally, however, Matt Coote, GumGum Australia’s managing director revealed to B&T that Australia has more partners leveraging the solution than any other market globally.
More importantly, he said, it’s not just the number of partners that matters, but actually it’s the breadth of categories GumGum represents.
“We have eight [partners] live currently, which is really exciting. And the exciting part for us, it’s across a number of different categories, from government, finance to auto and soon to lockdown B2B. That tells us that the signals that we have are valuable to the marketers and the agencies, and now it’s our job to go and validate that by delivering positive outcomes,” Coote said.
GumGum’s expansion into Australia began in 2021 with the acquisition of Sydney-based Playground XYZ, a global attention-based advertising platform. The acquisition brought significant geographical advantages, as Playground XYZ already had a strong presence not only in Australia, but also in New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK.
The rise of contextual advertising
Contextual advertising has grown in prominence in recent years, in line with the evolving shape of the open web. And as media budgets tighten, brands are increasingly turning to contextual solutions to make every impression work harder.
As a result, Loria said GumGum is seeing a clear shift in strategy: “from targeting broad audiences to the desire to bring relevance into that mix.”
That shift is also challenging the long-standing identity-first model—where targeting is based on who a user is, rather than what they are engaging with. According to Loria, that approach is no longer fit for purpose.
“It’s sort of assuming that because you know broad demographics that you know the right advertising to serve. We’re living and breathing, and we don’t live in a static world. So how you reach a consumer matters.”
Building on the shift to contextual targeting, GumGum is now pushing further, embracing what it calls a “mindset-first” approach.
For Loria, mindset is about looking beyond individual data signals and understanding the sum of a user’s behaviour in any given moment.
“I think about it like the weather,” she explained. “There’s temperature, humidity, wind—those are all signals. But what you actually care about is the condition when you step outside. That’s mindset.”
Rather than relying on static identifiers or past behaviour, mindset seeks to capture how a consumer is feeling and engaging in real time—whether they’re actively researching, passively scrolling, or emotionally invested in a piece of content.
“It’s not just the history of who I am, but where I am at that moment,” Loria added.
Early signs are promising. Improvements in brand lift and engagement suggest that campaigns aligned to mindset can deliver stronger outcomes for advertisers.
The approach is particularly effective in high-attention environments such as sport, where emotion and engagement can fluctuate in real time.
“If my team wins, I’m in a completely different mindset to when they lose,” Loria said. “The ability to tap into that moment, that’s where relevance really comes to life.”
As brands face tighter budgets and increasingly fragmented audiences, contextual advertising is proving its value by delivering relevance at scale. For GumGum, the focus is about understanding the why behind a user’s behaviour in real time, in order to deliver brands the most bang for their buck.
