Here's a Look Inside Dept's Tech Stack

Today's agencies look more like technology companies than they ever have before, but tech's been on agency leaders' minds for years. Nearly 15 years ago, when Willem Blom, global svp and partner at Dept, started a digital marketing agency in the Netherlands, he wanted to find out how to automate daily tasks. "We wanted to automate manual tasks and optimize media buying by using machine learning and mar tech to do that—both third-party marketing technology, as well as our own proprietary tools," he told Adweek. Dept came to be after TamTam, a Dutch agency founded in the Netherlands in 1996, was acquired by a private equity company in 2015, and then combined with Blom’s agency two months later. At the time, the combined entity staffed around 250 people. Dept has been growing and is a major playing in the international market. Now, headcount sits at roughly 2,500, and the agency manages $300 million in billings. It placed 10th on Adweek's list of fastest-growing large agencies. Agencies are expanding their tech stacks in an effort to intelligently wield massive amounts of insights from both campaign and third-party audience data. In fact, Forrester predicts that in 2022, 10% of agencies will crack the code to monetize their creative and media. In a recent report, Forrester Principle Analyst Jay Pattisall states that the interdependency of employees and technology "makes choosing an agency a de facto technology decision." Holding companies led the way, with some acquiring companies like Epsilon and Acxiom, but the big six (and other well-known large players) aren't the only ones making big tech investments. Acquiring a tech stack Along the way, more companies joined Dept, including factor-a and other digital marketing companies located mostly in Europe. Each company had its own tech stack, and Dept wanted to find a way to bring them all together. Dept's leaders began wondering how the company could build an aggregated marketing technology platform. Eventually, they created Ada by Dept, a technology platform that the agency publicly launched in December.As the company continues to grow and bring more brands into the fold, Ada is one way the company can make sure they're all integrated. "It is the overarching umbrella for all the mar tech that Dept has developed. Once a new agency joins Dept, they can plug into Ada and also deliver their point solutions through Ada," said Blom. "Going forward, it's going to be at the heart of all the digital marketing work that we do for our clients. Right now, we see that the majority of our clients at least touch base with parts of the full ad tech stack." Ada may be at the heart of the agency's digital marketing work, but Dept is at the forefront of emerging tech. It recently launched a metaverse practice, and the first open source, white-label solution for launching an NFT marketplace. The company also continues to make acquisitions, with data science and software engineering agency Raybeam joining the Dept fold in January. Ada by Dept All Dept employees can sign onto Ada and leverage the platform. Over the years, the agency has managed tens of thousands of campaigns across over 100 markets and, according to Blom, Ada is leveraging all of that data right now. Currently, Dept has over 30 offices in 13 markets. Ada is active in all of them. The platform is truly global in nature, operating in over 60 languages. Dept clients have access to parts of the platform, but Dept employees manage the tech stack. The company has over 1,000 employees on the digital marketing side of its business, and they all work with at least one part of the platform on a daily basis. Named for Ada Lovelace, the first person to write an algorithm, the Ada platform connects to media marketplaces and facilitates creative automation and data analysis. Its solutions include SEO optimization, a creative automation and skills suite, commerce solutions including chat bots and proprietary Amazon media optimization solutions. It's powered by machine learning and AI that accelerate and automate the buying process. Of course, Dept enlists developers and product specialists to build the technology. It employs over 100 data scientists dedicated to creating predictive technology that can recommend the buyers' next best action or the next step in a customer's journey. Product specialists connect with teams to determine what solutions to develop in the future. The agency developed the Ada platform itself in less than two months. So how does Ada compare to tech stacks and platforms at large agencies like Omnicom or Horizon Media? "From a media buying and a media optimization perspective, I think we're in the same brackets," said Blom, noting that Dept has key strengths like being able to create dynamic assets at scale and using AR and VR to create campaigns on emerging platforms like TikTok and Snap. "In the U.S. we're still relatively unknown, so that's definitely my biggest challenge. And the agencies that have joined Dept are still independently branded. But that will change next year as well," said Kristin Cronin LaFlamme, head of Dept's U.S. marketing, noting that in the next year the market will see a more forward-facing Dept brand in the U.S. How Omnicom’s Data Platform Helps Clorox Clean Up

The Future of Agencies

Agency Tech Stacks Aren't Just for the Big Six. Here's a Look Into Dept's Ada Platform

Technology is now top of mind for agencies across the board

Olivia Morley

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Olivia Morley