Asad Khan Joins Dentsu As Head Of Experience

Asad Khan has joined dentsu as head of experience, arriving from First Page, the Singapore-based digital marketing firm where he was digital director.

Appointment: head of experience, dentsu
Previously: digital director at First Page, based in Singapore
Earlier: nearly four years at iProspect, preceded by eight years at Performics India
At First Page, led integrated digital strategy and enterprise client growth across APAC
Experience: over 15 years across integrated digital strategy, search and client leadership

The Background Asad Khan Brings

Eight years at Performics India and nearly four at iProspect is a career built almost entirely inside performance. Those are search and biddable-media businesses, where the work is measured continuously and the argument with a client is about cost per outcome rather than about an idea.

Then Singapore and a regional remit at First Page, covering integrated digital strategy and enterprise client growth across APAC, with responsibility for commercial performance as well as delivery.

What The Title Is Doing

"Head of experience" is worth reading carefully, because it is not head of digital and it is not head of performance.

Experience as a discipline covers the whole path a customer takes rather than the channels that push them along it, which means site, product, data and service sit inside the brief alongside media. Agencies have moved towards the label because the money increasingly sits in what happens after the click, and because a network that only buys media is easier for a client to take in-house.

Why Performance People Get These Jobs

The instinct might be that an experience remit belongs to a planner or a creative lead. In practice it usually goes to someone from performance, and the reason is measurement.

Experience work is only defensible if the effect can be shown, and people who have spent fifteen years being held to a number are comfortable being held to one. Khan's return to the dentsu network, where iProspect sits, also means he is not learning the internal machinery from scratch.