Digiday yesterday published a short piece about the difficulty ad-tech companies have in succinctly explaining their value proposition to the market.
I was given the opportunity to participate and provide MediaMath’s pitch, and although what was represented as my quote is fair and accurate, it’s also incomplete. A more full representation of what I said would have included my focus on the decisioning tools that MediaMath has built at the core of our technology.
Here’s how I was quoted: “We develop digital marketing technology, and combine it with industry expertise to help marketers talk to individual users at scale. Our marketing operating system allows agencies and advertisers to plan, execute, optimize, and analyze marketing programs across the digital landscape.”
As part of this article, an unnamed agency leader was asked to provide a synopsis of the quotes provided by the ad tech companies. Which brings me to the reason for this blog post: The agency leader’s synopsis of my quote was: “A full service DSP”.
The fundamental problem with this synopsis is that it perpetuates the jargon that has become this industry and gives no credence to what companies like MediaMath have worked so hard to build over the past five years. After all, what does DSP really mean? And what does full-service mean?
And guess who suffers as a result of this analysis? The marketers that we – the technology providers and agencies – serve.
Because this kind of analysis slows down the evolution of an industry figuring out how to solve the business challenges associated with more data, more channels, and more decisions to make.
When I talk about offering industry expertise and services to complement our technology I’m not referencing managing campaigns. Thinking about “service” as campaign management misses the fact that CMO’s and VP’s of marketing at big companies are begging for guidance on how to integrate technology to improve their intelligence about their customers and activate that knowledge in real-time across digitally connected channels.
That is the business we are in.
And the use of these old acronyms are simply keeping this industry from being recognized for the advancement it has made in helping marketers create an enterprise level data-driven marketing practice that delivers results.