• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, February 20, 2014

Rubicon Project, a programmatic trading platform that recently filed for an IPO, is expected to Thursday announce the opening of an office and a data center in Tokyo, Japan.

Tomoyuku “Tommy” Ikeda has been named managing director, Japan. He will be based in the new Tokyo office and will report to Jay Stevens, the company’s international GM. Ikeda was mostly recently commercial director, Japan for Marin Software. 

The company’s first priority will be to find publishers and app developers in the Japanese market and sell them on the idea of automated advertising. On the other side of the equation, Rubicon Project will also search for media agencies and other buy-side partners to use their platform.

Stevens stated: “We have witnessed the rise of automated advertising across Asia-Pacific, especially in Japan.” One Japanese publisher already on board with Rubicon Project is Glam Media Japan.

The addition of a data center in Japan shows that Rubicon Project is not taking a half-measured approach with its expansion into the market. It will be the company’s sixth data center worldwide.

Kaylie Smith, the company’s head of seller cloud, told RTM Daily that a “data center” is “a group of networked computer servers used for the remote storage, processing and distribution of large amounts of data.”

She added that having a data center in Japan will help the company offer reduced latency -- i.e., faster trading speed -- for buyers and sellers, putting Japan “on par with other regions” Rubicon Project is in. The presence of the data center in Japan will help Rubicon in other APAC regions as well, including China, Taiwan and Australia.