In today’s data-driven world – what will be the future of adtech and martech? A significant union is prevalent between advertising and marketing technologies – so does that mean there will be more consolidations between adtech and martech startups? Or dominant players like Facebook and Google will continue to lead the digital advertising and online marketing landscape? Wish we knew the answers to all those and more! Here are just some of our thoughts on what could be a few of the hot or not-so-hot trends in adtech / martech.

First things first - to stay ahead of the curve, both advertisers and marketers, will have to move towards programmatic technologies to optimize the potential data and make intelligent use of big data and artificial intelligence. This layered with location, contextual, behavioral, and all the other user data will provide predictions based on how, when and who is the right audience for their brands.

Since it’s all about improving the experience for the customers who are increasingly characterized by data captured and real time analytics to better identify, target, deliver and measure the results of their campaigns - adtech and martech companies - should consider a few straight forward actions like:

• Make ads less intrusive – and focus more on search, sponsored content, social channels, custom ads etc.
• Invest heavily in content creation, especially creatives and dynamic videos.
• With the right programmatic technologies track and monitor right analytics to filter out impressions (humans versus bots).

And then to keep up with the evolving challenges of today’s adtech/martech landscape build more sophisticated tools and innovate to combat such challenges. A few ways to do that would be:

Master Cross-Device Tracking and Targeting - Advertisers today know that their audience is more likely to bounce from mobile to desktop to tablets and hence, mastering cross device success is not just about delivering ads across all those devices; but it is about tracking and measuring the delivery in order to build the full profile of the user and gather insights by monitoring engagement and actions to attribute it to consumer experience and patterns.

Personalized and Relevant Messaging - The vast pool of content across different devices and channels creates a noise where it is very easy for consumers to often ignore or miss the relevant brand message. And in order to capture the audience’s attention – it is imperative that brands drive the right message at the right time tailored to that one consumer – such relevant messaging / ads are less intrusive and they play into the consumers’ need for personalization, thus increasing the conversion rate.

Emphasize on Engagement more than Reach - While measuring both engagement and reach are important for brands; reach alone doesn’t guarantee a loyal consumer base. It is important for your audience to act and engage with your content - as without engagement, there is little chance of leveraging that relationship to convert into a lead or sale.

Advanced and Better Analytics for Better Decision Making - No longer can marketing decisions be taken on intuition alone and hence there is a huge leap in developing tools for digital analytics. With so much data available, marketers have to develop more sophisticated tools to obtain information on how the consumers interact, nurture and communicate with the brands. Advanced digital analytics tools will support, better, faster and more fact-based decision making.

Native Advertising to combat Ad Blocking - Ad blocking is an existential crisis for the advertising industry. With ad blocking on the rise, consumers (if annoyed with advertising) can hide or block it. In order to overcome that challenge, adtech companies should adapt native advertising – since most of these native ads are blended in content and are not fully susceptible to ad blockers which doesn’t intrude the consumer and blends into consumer’s experience who in turn may engage with it due to its relevance. Native advertising when done right can add value to the publisher, consumer and of course the brand!

So here we are - with our thoughts together on what we think are the trends that will shape the adtech / martech industry in the near future. However, having said that, we are not oblivious to the fact that the advancements which are taking shape in the virtual and augmented reality space will witness some new and exciting trends amongst the adtech /martech innovators. Let’s stay tuned for more!