Singapore is where Southeast Asia’s advertising money gets decided, even when it is not where the money gets spent. Regional headquarters, budget approvals and adtech contracts sit here; the impressions are frequently delivered in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Manila. That single fact makes choosing a media buying partner in Singapore a different decision from choosing one in a self-contained national market, because half the agencies on any Singapore list are selling regional reach and the other half are selling domestic efficiency.
This guide is an independent shortlist of the media buying agencies worth considering in Singapore in 2026: what each one is actually built for, what media buying costs in this market, and how to choose without overpaying. We publish benchmark data on what advertising costs around the world, so our interest is in helping you compare like for like, not in steering you toward any one firm.
Disclosure. Criterion Global is a partner of International Media Buying and appears first in this list. The rest of this guide is editorially independent: every other agency is included on the strength of its Singapore-market media-buying credentials, our selection criteria are stated openly below, and no agency paid for placement or ranking. See our methodology for how we work.
Why Singapore is a distinct media market
Most “best agency” lists treat every city as interchangeable. Singapore is not. Three things make it its own market, and they determine which kind of agency is right for you.
It is a regional headquarters market before it is a local one. Most global and regional brands run their Southeast Asia media planning from Singapore even when the majority of their delivery sits in neighbouring countries. That splits the agency roster cleanly in two: regional hub shops that plan across SEA from a Singapore base, and Singapore-domestic performance shops optimising for a home market of roughly five million people. Choosing the wrong side of that split is the most common and most expensive mismatch buyers make here.
It is genuinely multilingual. English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil are all official languages. Creative and keyword strategy that only covers English leaves domestic reach on the table before you get anywhere near the wider language fragmentation of the SEA gateway. An agency that treats Mandarin-language search or Malay-language social as an afterthought is quietly capping your ceiling.
The auction is small and expensive. A high-income, high-connectivity, mobile-first audience concentrated in a city-state means limited inventory and competitive CPMs relative to Singapore’s neighbours. You cannot buy your way out of that with volume. Efficiency here comes from creative quality, landing-page conversion rate and offer strength far more than from finding cheaper impressions. The channel mix also skews toward regional and super-app ecosystems: commerce media, app-install inventory and streaming matter more in this market than they do in comparable Western cities, and several agencies below build their entire APAC pitch on exactly that.
What media buying actually costs in Singapore
The most useful thing an independent publisher can add to an agency roundup, and the thing agency-written lists almost never include honestly, is what the media itself costs. An agency’s fee is only part of your budget. The auction is the rest, and in Singapore the auction is the expensive part.
There are two cost layers to understand:
- The agency’s fee: how they charge you, whether that is a fixed retainer, a percentage of spend, or a performance model tied to agreed outcomes. A handful of Singapore shops publish their pricing openly, which makes comparison unusually easy at the smaller end of the market; most quote privately.
- The media cost: the CPMs and CPCs you actually pay in the auction. If your campaign runs regionally, remember that a single blended number across Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam hides enormous variance, and that a regional average flatters cheap markets and punishes the expensive one.
Market-level cost benchmarks land here
This section is where our sourced, market-level cost figures embed: a composite view of what search and paid-social cost in this market, drawn from the same dataset behind our benchmarks. We publish these at market level deliberately. It is the more useful view for planning a budget, and it is the number an independent source should stand behind. Every figure is dated and sourced per our methodology.
The practical takeaway: before you sign with any agency, know roughly what your channels cost in each market you plan to run in, so you can tell whether a proposed budget is realistic and whether an agency’s fee is a sensible fraction of your total spend rather than the majority of it.
How to choose a media buying agency
Once you have a budget in mind, the choice comes down to fit. The best agency for a S$5,000 per month domestic lead-generation account is rarely the best one for a five-market APAC product launch.
Which markets will actually receive the majority of this budget’s impressions, and can this agency show you campaigns it has run in those markets specifically?
Work through four things, in order:
1. Geographic scope fit. Decide first whether you are buying Singapore or buying Southeast Asia from Singapore. A domestic performance shop that is excellent on the home auction may have no team, no language coverage and no publisher relationships in Indonesia or Vietnam. A regional network can be overkill, and overpriced, for a campaign that never leaves the island.
2. How they charge. A flat retainer, a percentage of spend and a performance model each create different incentives. Percentage of spend can quietly reward an agency for spending more rather than spending well. A fixed fee with no markup removes that incentive but shifts the risk of scale onto you. A KPI guarantee is genuinely useful, but read exactly what it guarantees, at which budget levels, and what the remedy is.
3. Transparency and ownership. Insist on owning your ad accounts, your data, your creative and your tracking setup. Several agencies here run on proprietary platforms and dashboards, which is fine as long as the underlying accounts and data remain yours when the relationship ends. Ask what you keep on day one of a hypothetical exit.
4. The team, not the pitch. The people in the sales meeting are rarely the people running your account. Ask who does the buying, how many accounts they carry, whether senior staff stay hands-on after onboarding, and where those people physically sit if your campaign is regional.
Before you sign anything
- Which markets do you buy in directly, and which do you subcontract or run remotely?
- How do you charge, and what does the total cost look like at my spend level?
- Who writes and reviews Mandarin, Malay or Tamil creative, and is that in-house?
- Do I own my ad accounts, data, creative and tracking outright when we part ways?
- Who runs my account day to day, and how many other accounts do they handle?
- If you offer a guarantee, what exactly is guaranteed, at what budget, and what is the remedy?
The agencies
Our selection criteria are simple and stated up front: each agency has a genuine media-buying focus (not just SEO, PR or web development), a verifiable Singapore presence, and a public track record you can check. This is a curated shortlist rather than an exhaustive directory: we would rather profile a smaller number of agencies accurately than pad the list. Directory listings, competitor listicles and forum threads were excluded as sources, as were network holding companies for which we could not verify a Singapore-specific media-buying practice page in this pass. Firms are grouped by fit, not by fee, and inclusion is never paid.
1. Criterion Global
Criterion Global describes itself as an international media buying agency and in-house paid media partner, working on new customer acquisition and global expansion for mid-market, enterprise, PE-backed and multi-market companies. Its APAC headquarters is at 1 Keong Saik Road in Chinatown and has, per the agency’s own site, led paid media services for APAC since 2018. The agency runs a six-office network across New York, Miami (LATAM HQ), Singapore (APAC HQ), Tokyo, Zurich and London, and publishes its site in seven languages including Japanese and Korean. Its positioning centres on capital-efficient media buying across borders rather than single-market execution. Best fit: brands using Singapore as the launchpad for a multi-market APAC or global rollout rather than a Singapore-only campaign.
2. KPI Media
KPI Media is a Singapore performance media agency that guarantees agreed KPIs contractually and refunds that month’s retainer if it misses them, on month-to-month terms with no 12-month lock-in. It buys across Google Ads (Search, YouTube, Performance Max, Display), Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter and Reddit, plus programmatic display, high-impact video, DOOH and programmatic audio. Published case studies name Canon Smart Tech, Epson, Kaspersky, OWNDAYS, Huobi (now HTX), MoneyOwl and Aspire, with several campaigns run across Southeast Asia and the Middle East and Africa. The site states the guarantee applies to monthly ad budgets between $5,000 and $50,000. Best fit: mid-budget advertisers who want contractual accountability on CPL or ROAS without a long lock-in.
3. M+C Saatchi Performance
M+C Saatchi Performance runs its Southeast Asia hub from Singapore, planning and optimising campaigns across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Services span paid search, programmatic, app marketing and ASO, commerce media and affiliate, streaming TV and video, influencer, and data analytics, with measurement through its proprietary M+C Saatchi OneView platform. The agency highlights super-app and platform experience in transport, food delivery and fintech, alongside certifications with TikTok, Google and regional adtech partners. Best fit: app-led and super-app-adjacent brands needing regional SEA media buying under one network roof.
4. Kaliber
Kaliber is a Singapore performance marketing agency working across Google Ads, Meta Ads, performance creative, landing-page testing and AI or generative search visibility. It is a Google Premier Partner, which it states places it in the top 3 percent in Singapore, and cites US$500M+ in media managed and 3,000+ brands diagnosed; founder Robert Lai is listed as ex-Google New York. Pricing is published openly: a fixed fee with no spend markup, Action Packs from S$1,500 and Performance Engine retainers from S$4,800 a month, with engagements run on its proprietary Kali OS system. Best fit: smaller Singapore advertisers who want transparent fixed-fee pricing and senior hands-on-keyboard work rather than percentage of spend.
5. Brew Interactive
Brew Interactive is a full-funnel digital marketing agency in Singapore covering paid media, SEO, generative search optimisation, content, social and marketing automation as a single team on one strategy. Its own stats cite 17+ years in the industry, 500+ clients served, 60+ specialists across Asia and $35M+ in ad spend managed, with 100+ platform certifications. It is certified across HubSpot, Salesforce, Adobe Marketo, Mailchimp and Klaviyo, and sets up CRM, automation and reporting alongside the media itself. Best fit: B2B and considered-purchase advertisers who need paid media wired into CRM and lead nurture rather than run in isolation.
6. NP Digital Singapore
NP Digital’s Singapore office is the local arm of Neil Patel’s global performance marketing group, structured around paid media, earned media, creative, and data and analytics. It positions itself as technology-enabled, using the group’s proprietary Ubersuggest and ATP tooling, and serves large enterprise clients alongside the broader NP Digital network. Its Singapore leadership is named publicly, including a Regional Managing Director for APAC, a Managing Director for Southeast Asia and a Singapore Client Director. The agency lists Google Premier Partner status and more than 50 awards and honourable mentions. Best fit: enterprise advertisers wanting global network scale and search-plus-paid integration from a Singapore base.
7. Heroes of Digital
Heroes of Digital is a Singapore performance agency running Google Ads, Meta and TikTok ads, conversion landing pages and AI-era SEO, with its proprietary HeroIQ platform. Its published figures cite $50M+ in managed media, $130M+ in trackable revenue generated, 120,000+ qualified leads since 2015 and 1,000+ businesses served. The agency states that clients work with senior specialists rather than juniors following templates, and frames reporting around revenue and return rather than rankings or clicks. Best fit: SMEs and local lead-generation businesses that want paid social and search tied directly to tracked revenue.
8. First Page Digital
First Page Digital is a Singapore digital marketing agency offering Google Ads, including Display, Shopping, Remarketing, YouTube, Bing and programmatic, alongside SEO and lead-generation funnels. It works with clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and markets performance guarantees backed by 300+ five-star reviews. Its packaged offers are organised around lead-generation funnels, brand visibility online, and e-commerce revenue campaigns. Best fit: advertisers wanting a large local shop with SEO and paid search under one roof and packaged, guarantee-backed engagements.
9. AJ Marketing
AJ Marketing is a creative and influencer-led marketing agency operating from Singapore across the Asia-Pacific, delivering campaigns in Singapore, Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan. Its work spans creative marketing, social media amplification, celebrity and influencer partnerships, video production and offline events, with campaign management handled end to end. The team is distributed across 10 countries and speaks 15 languages, which underpins its localisation pitch. Best fit: brands whose Singapore spend is mostly creator, social and video across multiple Asian languages.
Compare any agency's numbers against the market.
Before you commit to a budget, check what your channels actually cost in-market. Our benchmark database is free to browse and free to cite.
How to measure media-buying ROI
A good agency will hold itself to outcomes, not activity. Agree the metrics before the first campaign runs, and agree them per market if you are buying regionally.
Define the conversion that matters. A qualified lead, a booked demo, a purchase, an app install that survives day 7, or a return-on-ad-spend target: pick the one that maps to revenue and make it the scoreboard. Impressions and reach are inputs, not results. In an expensive, low-volume auction like Singapore’s, a conversion-rate improvement is usually worth more than any CPM negotiation.
Insist on real attribution. With third-party cookies gone and signal loss now the norm, credible measurement means server-side tracking, first-party data and, at larger budgets, incrementality testing that proves the ads caused the sales rather than merely accompanied them. If your campaign spans several SEA markets, insist that reporting breaks out by market. A blended regional number will hide a market that is quietly failing behind two that are working.
Judge over the right horizon. Direct-response channels give early signal in weeks but a trustworthy read in two to three months, once campaigns exit the learning phase. Regional rollouts take longer because every new market restarts that clock. Any agency promising instant return is selling, not measuring.
What’s changing in 2026
Three shifts are reshaping media buying in Singapore, and they are worth raising with any agency you shortlist.
Commerce media has become a core line item. Regional marketplace and super-app ad networks now capture budget that used to sit in search and social, and in Southeast Asia those ecosystems are where a great deal of purchase intent actually lives. Ask an agency how it plans and measures commerce media, not just whether it can buy it.
Streaming and app inventory keep taking share. Streaming TV, in-app and app-install inventory are more central to the APAC mix than to comparable Western markets, and the agencies with genuine app marketing and ASO practices are better placed than those treating app campaigns as an extension of paid social.
Generative search is changing the top of the funnel. Several agencies on this list now market generative or AI search visibility alongside conventional paid media, reflecting how much discovery is moving into AI-mediated answers. It is early, the measurement is immature, and you should treat confident claims here sceptically, but it is a legitimate question to put to a shortlist.
How to shortlist from here
Use this list as a starting point, not a verdict. Decide first whether you are buying Singapore or buying Southeast Asia from Singapore, because that single decision eliminates half the list. Then shortlist two or three agencies whose core strength matches your actual need, take them through the questions above, and go in knowing what your media should cost in each market you plan to run in, so you can tell a realistic proposal from an optimistic one. That last part is what we are here for.
- Agency profiles compiled from each firm’s official website, August 2026: Criterion Global, KPI Media, M+C Saatchi Performance, Kaliber, Brew Interactive, NP Digital Singapore, Heroes of Digital, First Page Digital, and AJ Marketing.
- All stated figures, certifications, client names and pricing are the agencies’ own published claims and were not independently audited.
- Media cost benchmarks and sourcing policy: International Media Buying Methodology.