Every now and then we like to highlight a new IAB Australia member that we think our community will find interesting. Today we meet Pivotus.
Written by Michael Petersen, Founder and CEO of Pivotus.
Please give us some historical background to the company:
From 1979 to 2010 Jane Fewings Media (jfmedia) were the independent Media Representation Company in QLD for media owners such as WAN, Fairfax, SBS and more. When we cottoned onto digital, we chose not to simply Rep an AdNetwork or the like but to build a new service via a Programmatic offering that sat alongside the offline repping.
MyMediaTradingDesk was formed in 2011 and became the programmatic provider to many indie media and creative agencies around the country. In 2017 it became the sole offering of jfmedia, having added in paid social.
In 2019 we rebranded to Pivotus and repositioned ourselves as a digital media agency for challenger brands, directly. And as at today, we now buy any and all media for our small remit of loyal clients, who are all retained and rely on us for strategy, planning, buying, activation and reporting.
Given Pivotus is a fully decentralised business and staffing model, we’ve built out the back-end operations to be exceptionally efficient and accurate. This single, centralised data hub also powers our world-class media reporting/dashboarding offering, which in 2025 was first opened to other independent agencies and brands. Our Marketing Intelligence division now has 3 staff and retained clients of its own.
In May 2026, Pivotus will be publicly releasing access to its first product, Argus. Argus delivers email alerts to subscribers each day that their nominated competitors post new paid ads on Meta or LinkedIn (with Google Display to follow). Not only are these ads depicted in the email alerts for quick decisions, but they and the landing pages are also housed for each subscriber in a custom portal they can interrogate.
Tell us a little bit about your company’s mission and vision?
Pivotus’ stated Vision is to provide a Positive Meaningful Impact with our Mission as a digitally-led, values-driven media agency exceeding expectations of challenger brands. Our diverse community of best-in-class talent is famous for streamlined systems, authenticity and results.
Do you have a particular ‘hero product’ that you are most proud of?
It’s the Marketing Intelligence service offering previously depicted. As one of only two independent media agencies in Australia to be partners with Funnel.io, we are able to provide enterprise level solutions for brands and agencies that don’t have the knowledge and resources to implement at that level.
Multi site operators and brands requiring scaled reporting from the Marketing operative to the C-suite, within one dataset and portal, love working with us.
That said, our digital media buying is pretty remarkable too.
What area of digital do you personally work in and how do you hope to enhance this within your business?
Primarily, we’re paid to plan and deliver performance orientated digital media campaigns. While we love pDOOH, BVOD, Audio and the like, our high staff to client ratio means we can spend the time and expertise delivering on lead gen and sales.
Please tell us what, as a child, you wanted to be ‘when you grew up’?
A Physio. Thank God I missed that OP by 1 point because business ownership and a flexible business structure (as well as not being a technician myself) has meant I can spend plenty of time with my family, travel, exercise, volunteer and still build and support a team of loyal and intelligent employees who love to deliver exceptional client service and results.