Part of the discussion we hope to have with attendees at Cannes is around how CMOs can feel more empowered to make key technology decisions for the company. As more marketers adopt programmatic across their marketing budgets, CMOs are expected to outspend CIOs for the first time ever by 2017, according to Gartner. Even now, marketing organizations are responsible for choosing and managing marketing service providers at 83 percent of companies and selecting technology providers at 71 percent, with this share only to grow.
These aren’t decisions that can be made easily or quickly. They require conversations with a variety of stakeholders in the company beyond Marketing and assessment of technologies and capabilities that can plug into a unified technology stack. These decisions also necessitate conversations with all of a marketer’s partners, agencies and technology providers alike.
Last week, we released a whitepaper in partnership with The CMO Club called “Evolving Your Agency Partnership Model to Drive Programmatic Success.” The survey of 72 marketers unearthed four areas in which they thought their brand could benefit from further collaboration between their agency and technology partners:
1. Maximized marketing ROI: Focusing on quantifiable and strategic outcomes, not tactical ones, better reflects the needs of true business goals. The right partners will have frequent, in-depth conversations about goals with clients and have a common view of what success looks like. These partners will also not be afraid to push marketers to consider other, different goals that might be a better fit for their overall business aims.
2. Improved access to cross-channel media: Transacting on more privileged, premium supply sources, especially when combined with the power of an open technology platform that provides transparency across the media buying process, benefits all stakeholders in the advertising ecosystem. Working with an integrated agency will also help you leverage and develop unique content, applications and/or creative with the supply provider that reach the desired users.
3. Better management and activation of first-party data: Agency and technology partners can help you better assess the data you currently have, come up with a data management strategy and plan to strategically activate across channels. Your partners should also be able to help you leverage third-party or proprietary data, with the appropriate vetting process in place to gain access to audiences in different markets or beyond your customer base.
4. Better measurement through more sophisticated attribution: Rely on agencies for support in implementing the right attribution solution, whether one proprietary to a tech provider or one of their partner’s solutions.
We invite you to join in a discussion of how CMOs and their executive-level counterparts can collaborate to make great technology decisions at our Cannes networking event with IBM on June 22. Click here for more information and to register.