The Illusions Of Technology In Advertising

under-one-roof-simple
Digital advertising has many buzzwords. This has been the case ever since the inception of the internet, when people went into an initial phase of money making frenzy through advertising. Over the years, in creating value for the consumers, we the saw the rise of ecommerce, classified stories, followed by content relevance and contextual advertising, progressing all the way to display and native advertising. In this journey, the one critical aspect of connecting the dots has been the ad-server.

The opportunity to monetize always existed in these businesses. Precision targeting was critical and the ones who benefited without it were the database-driven models who knew the consumers, given they owned them. This further transpired the value chain of the social media revolution, where opinions, content sharing and commentary took center stage.

The more complicated audience discovery got, the more it became important to find the right vehicles that would address the scattered audiences. Every educated eyeball translated into a valuable consumer source for someone in the business of selling products or services. This led to further complication with the advent of the multi-device usage. Therein however came the opportunity for ad-servers to become more intelligent. This is what the adtech industry is about – an industry that will be more than 25 billion USD in revenue, addressing 100 billion dollars digital advertising industry in the next five years. eMarketer suggests that the first de-growth of TV will begin from 2020 when digital spends will overtake TV spends globally.

Despite the complicated narrative, in essence this is all very simple. Think about it like the manufacturing industry, when one big manufacturer creates a slew of ancillary support businesses. This is what adtech does for digital advertising. We can see technology addressing the supply side of the business, or for the demand side of the business, or data scientists building a robust platform to enrich experiences for all in the ecosystem.

There could be gaps in targeting the consumer at the right time and at the right place or in delivering a rich media experience across all platforms at the same time or in maximizing the yield for a publisher. However, there are limitations to everything, and that is what I call, an illusion.

Technology cannot sell a useless product to a consumer irrespective of whatever targeting is done. Ensuring innovative advertising to match the product, hence, is critical.

Let’s take retail as a category and ecommerce as a platform. Here it becomes impossible to not use any of the techniques that are available in the digital world because the competition is fierce, and the platform becomes bigger than the category. Initially, in the ad-serving space, RTB would determine through waterfall methodology but that has changed to ‘server to server’ because that benefits the publisher. This is specifically true outside of database businesses in a closed environment or walled gardens which Facebook and Google dominate. But there is a larger world outside, where adtech is evolving every day.

Illusions however, are illusions. Technology depends on the architecture. All the available offerings will not be able to fight the walled gardens unless they are under one roof. Technology can take the horse to the pond but it cannot make it drink. Don’t be in an illusion.

Add Comment