It’s the customer, stupid!
An obsession with technology – not the customer – in the automated age is failing brands, says RadiumOne’s Rupert Staines.
Technology is greasing the wheels of change. The speed at which it helps us transform lives, businesses, experiences – and almost everything – is simply astonishing. IBM states we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily and that 90% of data in the world today was gathered in the last two years. It’s only going to get bigger and bigger as consumers’ obsession with technology increases.
In the world of programmatic and automation, change is happening at an equally frightening pace. Only five years ago such automated trading was the equivalent of a new born child, but now it’s reaching relative maturity in markets like the UK.
The IAB states that the UK programmatic market was worth around £1bn in 2014 and is set to be 60-75% of the total display market by 2017. Change is happening – and fast. This redirection of revenue is astonishing and is fundamentally turning the media industry on its head, with agency business models, recruitment, creativity and client structures all evolving in various ways to cater for, and react to, the new media landscape.
Improved efficiencies
Ultimately, this change is great for the brands we all seek to represent and help grow. Their considerable media investments are becoming much more efficient thanks to today’s automated trading environment.
Buyers and sellers are being brought together more efficiently than ever before, meaning clients can find consumers in the right place, at the right time, on the right device. The Uber effect has well and truly arrived. This is something that should be celebrated.
However, it’s important to remember that automated trading is just a means to an end. We all essentially want to help brands deliver better business outcomes.
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Mobile device growth
The UK consumer is, arguably, the most sophisticated on the planet when it comes to technology. The huge investment in digital is seeing fascinating changes in the way we use devices – namely mobile increasingly being the internet device of choice. Consequently, brands face the challenge of identifying a single customer view from cross-device usage.
According to the latest comScore Mobile Metrix 2014 study, 72% of us Brits are now multi-platform comfortable using desktop, laptop or mobile device and it’s critical we understand these patterns.
Clutter and confusion
The infamous marketing technology industry LUMAscape slide shows the challenge brands and clients have in navigating the cluttered UK ad tech landscape. There are simply too many companies trying to service brands.
Too many over-claim their capabilities, while talking in tech-language that many clients find difficult to understand. The result is chaos and confusion and this digital subterfuge must stop.
Ad tech businesses need to stop talking about what they do (the tech) and start inspiring clients with why they do it and what they can deliver. Effectively, brand themselves like the clients do.
The fallout is already beginning. Companies are being bought, sold or simply failing and I expect to see a much tighter landscape in the years ahead as the industry matures.
It’s the customer, stupid!
This obsession with technology and automated trading actually misses the point. Who is it that creates all this data? Who is engaging and interacting with devices every second of every hour of every day?
It’s not the technology, it’s the consumer; and in the battle for technological supremacy and higher revenues it’s something that is being forgotten. Data is merely the energy source for the magic that agencies are helping brands create and action in regards to the consumer.
As Sarah Power, US chief strategy officer for Initiative said: “Our job is to create human links with people. Brands needs to understand the roles they play in a person’s life. Be contextually relevant and people will be more willing to accept it. You have to think about the person behind all of this data.”
Of course, it’s critical we look to find the highest quality data because that will deliver improved performance which is what all brands want and expect from their agency partners.
‘Street furniture’ challenge
As the industry matures and the programmatic opportunity moves increasingly up the client agenda there are serious hygiene factors our industry needs to sort. It’s fair to say in 2015, automated trading has suffered from the Paula Abdul effect – two steps forward and one step back.
There’s been much debate, and rightly so, around brand safety, viewability, fraud and ad transparency. The quicker we agree on the issues around our industry “street furniture” and get our plumbing in place, the more the digital industry can move forward.
‘Old media’ has the long-term heritage to tell its viewability story, so it’s critical the online industry sorts out its own affairs quickly so we can get on with delivering on our promise to clients from the automated trading revolution.
If we do that, the pounds will continue to flood in. If we don’t, clients will rightly look elsewhere as Sir Martin Sorrell intimated last week.
A connected future
The Holy Grail for brands is to be able to connect their audiences everywhere – whatever device they are on and wherever they are – to deliver a single customer view. The technology exists today to deliver on this single customer vision and, by focusing more on the consumer, we’ll get to play a more important role in a brand’s journey.
As technology evolves and automated trading matures, new ‘superhighways’ are becoming increasingly prominent and challenging the status quo. Online sharing behaviour is only going to become more important and will become the fourth major behavioural superhighway alongside search, social and purchase.
By better understanding and focusing on consumer behaviour, automated trading specialists will be able to take advantage of the most effective data to deliver optimum performance for brands.
The $37bn of programmatic spend up for grabs (according to the latest Magna Global programmatic study) should focus our minds. Are you having the right conversation with your client?
Rupert Staines is European managing director, RadiumOne.