Germany brings sobriety back to technology decision-making

Alicia Navarro, CEO and co-founder of Skimlinks, found dmexco 2015 to be a surprisingly teetotal occasion – is this good or bad?

It’s not often that I’m at an exhibition and at 3pm I’m wondering where the beer is. Not since my early days in tech have I cared that much about the imminent arrival of the drinks trolley. But at dmexco this year, it was notable by its absence – and without doubt, felt like the polar opposite to that other all-encompassing event of the advertising industry, Cannes Lions.

This wasn’t my first dmexco. In 2012 and 2013 I ventured over to the show that celebrates German ad tech in all its various forms (if ever there was a phrase to strike fear and boredom in the hearts of those not from our industry ‘German ad tech’ was it). So you could say I was sufficiently prepared for the sheer scale of the event, but I have to say it’s still mind-boggling.

The exhibition is comprised of three and a half enormous halls of gleaming stands professing words straight out of ‘Bullshit Bingo’: yield optimize! Actionable analytics! Maximize revenues! And God forbid if you draw the short straw and end up in the dreaded ‘half’ of the ‘three and a half halls’: the slightly dimmer section for newbies and outcasts of dmexco that I didn’t even realised existed until the last 10 minutes of my time at the exhibition this year.

Despite these dark overtones though, dmexco is in fact one of my favourite ad tech events of the year. It attracts such a diverse set of players from all over the globe. There are agencies, publishers, e-commerce players, B2B SaaS, ad networks, big data, performance marketing, display, native, mobile, video… you name it, they were there, and not only did they have a presence, they were all out in force.

One of the things I’ve always marvelled about at dmexco is that it attracts not just the sales, marketing and PR teams, but the C-level executives of these companies, who invariably fly in especially to meet and mingle with existing and prospective customers. If you wanted to meet the President of Criteo, the CEO of AppNexus, the CTO of Lotame, they are all there, at their larger-than-life booths, handing out coffees.[advert position=”left”]

Now about that coffee. Whenever the wine and beer was opened up at 3pm (or sometimes earlier) in years past, it felt like it helped democratise the experience: yes, you could be talking about the machine learning algorithms used to achieve statistically significant improvements in conversion rate, but with a beer in your hand at the same time, it somehow made it a celebration.

To my surprise, dmexco this year felt teetotal. There were the occasional beers after 5pm from the Xaxis booth (those Group M guys know how to party!) but gone was the banging house music from every stand (although Dentsu-Aegis fought the good fight on that one), gone were the scantily clad podium dancers, gone was the overflowing goodies and food from every stand you passed.

It was most noticeable on the second afternoon of the conference when the partying usually kicks in gratifyingly early, and instead, everything was business, chatter, and coffee.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I was at dmexco for the party. It actually was a relief that you could hear each other speak, and that you weren’t nursing a hangover for the duration. But the difference was enough to make me question why.

Is it because budget constraints across the board led to more conservative freebies? Is it possible that despite the glitz and showy booths, there is a degree of caution behind the spending habits of even the largest players, realising that excess was inadvisable? Was it because demonstrating too much excess was counter-intuitive to winning customers, because clearly if you have that much extra money to spend, you must be over-charging your customers?

Was it caused by nervousness about the longer time financial impact to traditional ad tech firms of ad blockers, mobile usage, and migration of content creators to platforms such as Instagram and Facebook? Was it an attempt to elevate what was a traditionally more boozy event to become more conservative like US-based events, as Germany continues its growth as a world power? I suspect that partly all of these factors played a role.

Having remained steadfastly on a caffeine high, while attending a host of very productive meetings, I came to the conclusion that apparently – finally – someone has figured out a way to successfully optimise the exhibition experience. At least if you’re optimising for Return on Coffee.