The worlds of ad tech and martech are increasingly colliding, which poses marketers with many questions to ask themselves about how they conduct their business from day-to-day, including where their roles fit within an organisation, and whether or not they should break historic ties, in favour of new relationships with companies offering the latest technologies. Scott Brinker, Chiefmartech.com, editor, speaks with ExchangeWire about how these trends are disrupting the industry.

EW: There is a lot of talk about the rise of the ‘mega stacks’ with Google, and increasingly Facebook, building their own end-to-end solution, but at the same time we also have martech vendors such as Adobe, Oracle, et al. also building significant interests in this space. How do you think these increasingly colliding forces will disrupt the existing dynamics within the advertising industry, and do you ultimately envisage ‘one (advertising or marketing) stack to rule them all'?

SB: I’m glad you’re starting me out with an easy question, just prognosticating the future of one of the world’s most complicated and dynamic markets.

I know two things are true: first, the collective world of advertising and marketing is in a period of unprecedented disruption and innovation; second, I’m not smart enough to predict how all these intertwining forces are going to play out. There are just too many possibilities, and I can imagine many that are plausible. Anyone who tells you they know exactly how this space is going to evolve is likely delusional, or trying to sell you something.

However, I think that’s a valuable realisation for marketers and agencies to have. If you’re betting on a single outcome for how the future is going to materialise, you’re taking a pretty big risk. The best technology strategy for marketers is to design for change. The most important aspect of that is understanding what your core data assets are and what access you — or others — have to them. I'd advise that people favour platforms and products that have open APIs and are ecosystem-friendly, and nurture the technical talent in your organisation who can vet and verify your vendors and plan for contingencies to keep your options open.

As for 'one stack to rule them all', I think it’s unlikely that one vendor will be able to satisfy all of the marketing technology needs of a business of any real scale. There’s just too much innovation, happening too quickly, across too many diverse facets of our industry. However, I do think it’s probable — and desirable — for there to be major platforms that serve as a stable foundation of the modern marketing stack.

EW: How do you see these components coming together, and ultimately how can this disrupt the existing advertiser/agency/ad tech provider/publisher dynamic?

SB: Advertising and marketing technologies — ad tech and martech — are unquestionably colliding, under the banner of omni-channel marketing. When most people talk omni-channel, they mean digital advertising, email marketing, and the website. Right there, you have to coordinate across DSPs (demand-side platforms), MAPs (marketing automation platforms), and CMS (content management systems); but, of course, omni-channel is ultimately much bigger than that. These technologies grew up in different silos, but they’re now having to all interconnect.

The biggest disruption in the services side of the business seems to be the changes to agency and advertiser relationships that this will bring. Ultimately, brands must own their data. In a digital world, it is possibly their most valuable asset. This is where we already see companies that are technically savvy moving the DMP (data management platform) layer in-house. At the very least, agencies will have to work with — and contribute to — these company-owned data stores, operating within a set of rules that will be governed as much by the brand’s IT department as its marketing team.

Brands also must take ownership of their customer experience, which now spans the entire lifecycle of touchpoints — from the very first ad impression onward. As omni-channel marketing blurs into customer experience, advertising campaigns won’t stay in a silo. They’ll need to be coordinated with more client-side support, bridging paid and earned media. There will be strong incentives for the technology to manage and optimise these omni-channel flows of customer experience to be centralised in-house as well, and that is an existential threat to the media buying power of agencies.

However, while there is tremendous disruption ahead for agencies, there’s also incredible opportunity. Marketing is gaining influence in the corporation. Its budgets are growing. Its responsibilities are growing, and marketers are going to need a ton of help to design and execute these next generation, omni-channel marketing experiences. Agencies need to figure out how to service those demands and monetise it through something other than media.

EW: How do marketers manage relationships between the above components, and the aforementioned martech technologies they already have? Does this mean one (or more) of the above-listed parties will fall by the wayside, in your opinion?

SB: In the short term, it’s unlikely that any of the major components in digital marketing are going to fall out. Some may meld together, but that process will take time. Most of the progress in the near future is simply getting these components to work together better — whether that’s through a more open ecosystem or acquisitions under the label of a common 'marketing cloud'.

You also bring up an excellent point. Very few companies have a greenfield when it comes to their marketing stack. Almost everyone has different legacy components, across different business units, different regions, and different departments. For instance, sales probably isn’t going to cede control of their CRM anytime soon. The ecommerce team isn’t going to throw out their existing store platform with dozens of different specialised script plug-ins. It’s a heterogeneous marketing technology world.

Again, for marketers, I think the most important thing is to 'follow the data'. You can have a sink, a shower, and a toilet from three different manufacturers, but you want to make sure they’re all connected to the proper plumbing.

EW: Of course, given the above listed dynamics, there is massive speculation of the ‘rise of programmatic in-house’, as some (larger) brands are taking ad tech in-house, and tasking their agencies with managing this tech. Do you think this is a model that is scalable in markets outside of the US (across more fragmented markets such as Europe)? If so, how can holding groups (both traditional agencies, and their trading desks) move to prevent complete disintermediation?

SB: In more fragmented markets — or markets where there are other legacy forces that resist change — it’s certainly a more challenging road to true omni-channel marketing, with data and customer experience optimisation control centralised within brands. However, you have to ask yourself which direction the trend is heading. Is programmatic adoption growing? Yes. Are in-house marketing technology capabilities growing? Yes. It may take longer for some markets and businesses than others, but I’d not want to be betting against progress.

As for how agencies can prevent disintermediation, I don’t know. How did travel agents prevent disintermediation? How did music stores? Stockbrokers? They didn’t. When it became cheaper, faster, and better for buyers to use digital technologies, the old service providers in those industries either shifted to a different kind of offering, shrank to a particular niche, or went out of business.

I’m sure there are ways they can fight this — and maybe they’ll hold the ramparts for a while. Although I think the holding groups are better advised to invest in the shift instead of stalling it. One of the great advantages they have with their structure is the ability to diversify their portfolio of businesses. Some of their businesses can continue to milk the old media models for as long as possible. Others can experiment with new models. Given the renaissance of marketing currently underway, they may actually uncover better opportunities. I believe they have a wide range of strategic options, if they think beyond their legacy businesses.

EW: Finally, when it comes to martech increasingly being taken in-house, how do you see this disrupting the traditional operating models within the marketing institution? For instance, would this mean there is confusion over who has responsibility/final say over marketing and IT infrastructure (i.e. is this a case of the CIO Vs. the CMO), or are we looking at the rise of a completely new employee type?

SB: Yes. Very few companies can accomplish digital transformation without making changes to their organisational structure or operating models. Creating an entirely separate digital unit run by a chief digital officer is the most extreme version of that — and such a CDO may override both the CMO and the CIO.

However, I think the longer term solution is for marketing to become natively tech-savvy. There are roles for 'marketing technologists' within the marketing team, hybrid professionals who have technical skills, but are passionate about applying them in the service of marketing. They help inform and connect marketing strategy with the right marketing technologies, and they help the broader marketing team apply those technologies in the right ways.

Marketing technologists are not a replacement for IT — in fact, in some companies, these roles emerge from the IT department. In my opinion, IT still needs to be the arbitrator of technology governance in the organisation, and the champion of centralised, cross-departmental technology infrastructure. However, given the massive explosion of innovation in marketing technologies — and the democratisation of software in general — marketing needs to take responsibility for its tools and how it uses them.

This topic will be debated at length by Brinker plus a host of other industry luminaries at The Marketing Tech Conference taking place on 31 March, and 1 April. Further details of the event are available here.