Why Now Is the Time for Advertising and Marketing Technologies to Converge

In a Gartner blog post, Mar-Tech and Ad-Tech: A Shotgun Wedding?, Martin Kihn wrote, "Marketers want a world where ad tech and marketing tech are not two different things … this thesis forms the spiritual core of Gartner's recent Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs." According to Jay Baer in his Masters of CX Econsultancy report, Winning Hearts in Real-Time, digital advertising will increase its ad market share from 18 percent in 2012 to 23.4 percent in 2015 and overtake television by 2017. Better Together That's why combining data-driven advertising and marketing is a big deal. It's also why ad technology and marketing technology departments shouldn't be singing a different tune but rather working closer together, in harmony. Here's just some of what your organization could be doing: --Unifying marketing and advertising data to deliver personalized content and ads across all digital channels --Improving paid media conversions on owned and earned channels --Making your ad spend more efficient and enhancing display-campaign performance --Really knowing your customers and what they want and delivering it through multiple channels and devices Fixing the Customer Experience The most important long-term benefit is fixing the fragmented experience consumers have every day. When advertising data and marketing data reside in different systems—sometimes within different companies—you can't deliver a consistently intelligent experience across channels that wins customers' hearts in real time. Marketing Data Management: Big Data? No Big Deal An enterprise data management platform (DMP) and a foundational data management strategy simplify the data game for advertising and marketing in one place so you can focus on what's truly important—creating customer love and revenue. You can combine online and offline data including the first-party data you capture in your own systems like email, CRM, retail and Web interactions; second-party, co-opted data shared between you and another partner; and anonymous third-party data consolidated from other websites and social-media platforms that have behavioral or demographic data sets. Then you layer this data with ID, channel and device type connected to user IDs for a more complete customer view. Once you've got it all in one place, then you can turn it on, or "activate" it, across your marketing and ad systems. Data Activation: You Turn Me On. I'm a DMP Now comes the fun part: Data activation is unlocking the value of data through the development of insights and then turning those insights into action. By adding and refining taxonomy, leveraging audience analytics and enabling look-alike models, you can activate data. Once you have organized and intelligent data, you can turn that centralized audience into a multichannel audience through activation channels—either in your own system or through media and marketing partners. Harmonious Convergence: Better Customer Experience Back in the old days, marketers counted clicks much like they collect connections on LinkedIn or Facebook friends. But how many of those people are close friends or even colleagues? How well do you really know them? Marketing departments deployed systems with email marketing, cookies and website intelligence that could read a consumer's digital body language, build profiles and identify actionable moments in the buyer's journey. The reality now is that marketing has furthered its footprint in many enterprises because people recognize it influences most of the consumer touch points. Delivering a relevant customer experience is critical, and, while data informs this experience, data management platforms enable this new reality. So, how do you align Mar-Tech and Ad-Tech? --Connect online and offline interactions to one customer. Connect interactions to individual consumers across all devices and channels and achieve a higher level of personalization. --Bridge anonymous and known marketing. Connect all proprietary and third-party data to increase relevance and target more efficiently with a laser focus. --Adapt with behavior-based orchestration. Empower consumers to dictate their own paths rather than force them onto a rigid one you've devised. Many Happy Returns Many leading brands are taking advantage of this approach to advertising and marketing technology harmony. Here's just a sample of the results from using a DMP approach across industries: --A financial services customer increased direct sales by 200 percent. --Our retail customers saw more than a 400 percent revenue lift and four times better campaign performance. --A leading telecommunications customer saw a 200 percent increase in conversion and $1.5 million in media efficiency savings. This happened for these companies because they centralized their technology strategy between marketing and advertising. Read our Data Activation Results guide to learn more about these kinds of business results. If you're in New York for Advertising Week, you know this convergence is the talk of the town. If not, you know it's in your future—it's just a question of how soon you make this future your reality. From all the indications, that time should be now. Kevin Akeroyd (@Akeroyd) is gm and svp at Oracle Marketing Cloud.

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Why Now Is the Time for Advertising and Marketing Technologies to Converge

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Kevin Akeroyd

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Kevin Akeroyd