Reports of Adtech's Death are greatly Exaggerated

In May 1897, legendary American writer Mark Twain fell seriously ill during an overseas visit to London. The unspecified illness proved too much for Twain, and he eventually succumbed to it and died.

As news of Twain's death spread, a mourning nation printed obituaries in major publications and became increasingly curious about the cause and details of this shocking event.

Upon learning of his own death, an alive and well Mark Twain (when reached for comment by a reporter from The New York Journal days later), was heard to remark "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

The strange occurence of these false rumours spreading as quickly and widely as they did was written off as an anomaly at the time. Surely the public at large had learned its lesson and would be more cautious with similar rumours in the future.

But it wasn't to be.

Britney Spears, Sir Paul McCartney, Jeff Goldblum, Oprah Winfrey, Terry Gilliam, Sylvester Stallone, and Paris Hilton (among many, many others) have all since found themselves (and their PR teams) dealing with widespread rumours of their deaths as well.

And the trend shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Why?

Because "Such And Such Is Dead" makes for a great headline. It is the type of headline that lends itself to the hashtags, facebook posts and clickbait articles that have kept the internet and its many users spinning in our collective hamster wheels for the better part of 2 decades.

Mark Zuckerberg famously set the blogosphere ablaze when he declared email "dead" way back in 2011. 6 years later we are all still waiting for his prophecy to be fulfilled.


The “guess what’s dead now” of the day? Adtech.

Which is why we here at Adimo found ourselves feeling a bit skeptical when we read this recent headline on an article by Samuel Scott about adtech: “Will February 2017 go down as the month that destroyed adtech?”

Certainly, the latest adtech headlines haven’t looked all that encouraging. In the article, Scott outlined 3 scandals which had rocked the industry in February of this year:

1) Mercedes Benz was caught out advertising on ISIS recruitment videos leading to some sensational “Adtech is making companies fund terrorism” headlines…

2) Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer for consumer goods megabrand Proctor and Gamble publicly took a stand against the opaque data (like the ubiquitous “impressions” metric) currently offered by online advertising networks to justify their fees…

3) Facebook lied to advertisers about average view times on its video streams, overstating them by 60-80% for the past 2 years, data which skewed adtech spend and brought the advertising practices of social networks as a whole under the media microscope, something they certainly do not need at this phase in their efforts to effectively monetise their audiences.

There is certainly a lot to digest in this list, and there is no question that such scandals represent a great opportunity for the adtech industry as a whole and the brands which utilise it to do some serious soul-searching.

But does this mean that the concept of “right ad, right person, right time” has suddenly become irrelevant? We think not. Advertising and marketing relevance will continue to be key factors in determining digital marketing success as the internet and its various key platforms continue to evolve.

At this stage, anyone who has been paying attention to the development of online marketing over the last 10 years can be left with little doubt off the desperate need for clear, transparent, and independent data to help measure the impact of online campaigns, create more sensible and clear pricing structures for ad space, and optimise digital marketing spend. As a matter of fact, these things are far past due.

Can adtech deliver all this on its own?

But that’s OK. It doesn’t need to.

The concept of utilising large amounts of available user data to target the right person at the right time with the right ad is a sensible one. Anyone who understands modern digital audiences can see that this fact is indisputable.

Adtech, which is primarily focused on marketing and advertising placement optimisation through the programmatic buying and selling of online advertisements based on this user data, didn’t create the issues outlined above. The people who developed digital advertising’s existing processes did.

That’s the thing with new technologies: They don’t always perform perfectly right out of the gate.

They need to be honed, rethought, tested, and honed some more. This process can take a really long time and is subject to the whims of human error.

Adtech is no different.

It can (and will) do better.

The truth is, even adtech on its best day cannot stand alone in the arena of digital marketing and solve everyone’s problems at once. It isn’t the solution to underperforming direct marketing campaigns on social media platforms, but it is a part of that solution.

The other part of the equation can be found in adtech’s cooler, better looking cousin “martech”.

Martech, which is focused on marketing and advertising processes, rather than placement, can fill in the gaps in the current digital marketing funnel left by ad designers and adtech, make ads function better, and work to ensure that the right ad in front of the right person at the right time actually yields results in the form of conversions and sales. It can help retailers and brands regain control of their own data and optimise their own campaigns/placements accordingly.

It will be at this point, where adtech’s data optimised placements meet martech’s optimised processes, that advertisements on digital platforms will finally achieve their amazing potential.

The value in what adtech has to contribute to the ever evolving way that brands market themselves and their products online is beyond dispute.

Martech will never replace adtech. They are two sides of the same coin.

The sooner the brands and bloggers of the world learn this simple truth, the better.