ExchangeWire speak with advertising veteran, and Captify COO, Vincent Potier about his take on ad tech in 2017; the industry opportunities that exist for behavioural targeting; and how we can learn from our friends across borders.

ExchangeWire: What are the core topics you think are the focus of the ad tech industry in 2017?

Vincent Potier: It is evident to see that the driving forces of the ad tech industry are data and transparency. These will continue to dominate industry discussions this year and beyond 2017.

Brands have realised the value that data has in understanding their consumers and influencing their marketing efforts; and it’s really powering the ad tech industry nowadays. I think there will also be an increase in discussions from the industry around the different types of data that are accessible and how these are used by brands and ad tech companies to optimise audience reach, facilitate effective ad spend, and deliver cross-device campaigns. Search intelligence will be one area of data that we will hear more of as brands search to learn more about their customers’ real intent.

In addition to this, in regards to transparency, especially relating to brand protection and safety, viewability and costs – I think these will remain challenges for the ad tech industry and continue to drive conversations on how to solve this. We will probably see more initiatives emerging – similar to the DTSG principles in the UK that launched in 2013 – that will help to ensure that the industry is adopting the correct approach in protecting brands, dealing with viewability, and inventory transparency.

Are those areas of focus aligned with those of the brands and the agencies?

They should be, as brands are at the top of the value chain and influence the trends that are set; consequently agencies and their partners have to respond to these shifts and changes in digital media-buying.

The ad tech industry is fast-evolving and shifting; and these trends are more or less determined depending on factors such as brands, agencies, and geographies. Brands have been pushing transparency in the United States for the past couple years and data has become pervasive, in part with the rise of data exchanges and the increasing popularity with publishers and brands of DMPs.

As COO of Captify, and a member of the IAB behavioural targeting council, do you think behavioural targeting is fully understood across the industry?

Vincent Potier, COO, Captify

Pretty much so. There are still numerous elements missing in the industry, but it has come a long way. There are still tools that have been omitted, which would aid in building a better understanding, such as the fact the industry does not spend enough time working on, and with, attribution models. Attribution models would help with the endemic problem of duplication in heavy DR campaigns and rationalise buying. These models can provide a fairer distribution across publishers and avoid penalising these, as the current user-focused ecosystem does not reward context and content enough and, very often, strong prospectors’ endeavours are underestimated with the current last-cookie and, or last-view, model.

How can behavioural targeting make budgets work harder?

By using the latest data-driven technologies that provide unique data sets, addressing issues with transparency, adopting attribution models, and the drive towards creating true partnerships between brands, agencies, and third-party experts, is the only way that it will help display advertising budget work harder.

Does behavioural targeting have a place in cross-device activity and across different platforms?

Of course, cross-device is mainly the ability to connect different data sets together, through different devices, across various geographic locations, and match different segments identified.

Multiple data sets and 'connectors' (matching enablers) help media experts and marketers to do just that through sociodemographics, geolocation, attitudinal, behavioural, log in, transactional, and billing data. Search intelligence has also emerged as a powerful unifier of cross-device behaviour, and is increasingly used in order to join the dots of consumer multi-device, multi-channel journeys, ranging beyond digital into even offline media.

You’ve held various global roles throughout your career – what insights have you gained from working with different markets? Do you think there is enough cross-border knowledge sharing in ad tech?

I wish there were more cross-knowledge sharing between markets. Right now, the different geographies harbour different ecosystems. There are two main driving forces for faster knowledge sharing and dissemination across markets.

The first one is the power of global marketing departments – these will push to spread best practice across countries, relying on their subsidiaries, agencies, and global partnerships.

The second one is jargon – our industry is not that complicated, but it appears complex because it is a fast-changing industry. Language in ad tech has long been used for differentiation rather than for communication. By this I mean that complex terminology is a signal of differentiation; yet if we simplify the terminology, the more people will understand. The jargon has helped create this notion of a very complex world left to specialists, whilst it is the absolute opposite; ad tech is media, ads and data, facilitated by tech.

Captify is a business that stems from innovation in search intelligence; yet it is often said innovation in search is dead. Is intelligently using search intent data across platforms the way to scale search?

Search is going through a kind of renaissance. The emergence of search data as an actual data set has led to 'Search Intelligence'. From a DR marketing technique aimed at offering one-liner ads in context of searches within a 'parked' environment, search is reborn as a rich, complex, multi-layered data set, offering infinite possibilities for targeting, insights, audience-building, device graphs, etc. In a nutshell, search intelligence has taken the accuracy of traditional 'search' and has given it depth and scale.