The Commoditization of Ad Tech — How The Cross-Device Landscape is Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better
by Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Founder & CEO, Drawbridge
Late last year I wrote a piece that predicted, among other things, that “the year(s) of mobile” had passed, and that 2015 would be the year of cross-device. It’s now been nine months and that prediction seems pretty accurate: just about every ad tech company from the desktop-centric display advertising incumbents to the mobile-first platforms are now offering some sort of cross-device solution for marketers. With all of these players in the market, it’s clear to me that in terms of the ad tech LUMAscape, it’s going to get more crowded and less transparent before the dust settles on cross-device.
Perhaps I should have predicted that 2015 would be the year of cross-device commoditization. The value is high and the barriers to entry are low — key ingredients for any commodity market. Everyone — especially marketers — knows that consumers are living cross-device lives. With personal computers, mobile devices, and emerging devices like connected TVs and smartwatches, marketers have an urgent need for cross-device reach. With so many companies scrambling to put together a solution, and checking the box to say, “Sure, we offer cross-device,” marketers are overwhelmed. The menu of options has gotten much longer!
Finding Value When Everyone Sells The Same Thing
Smart marketers evaluating solutions will look at the full scope of the market and gravitate towards the leaders. In this particular space, market leadership is defined by scale, accuracy, traction as measured by integrations and adoption, and an application stack that proves the value. An additional source of value for cross-device identity platforms is the extensibility of the data — the ability to take the solution beyond advertising applications. For example, content personalization, site optimization, and even risk and fraud detection across devices can all be bolstered by a persistent identity solution. Marketers are realizing that there are applications for cross-device beyond the ad tech realm. Another item to consider is what the vendor means by “cross-device.” In this potentially commoditized space with relatively low barriers to entry and high potential product value, all solutions are not equal.
As AdExchanger’s Joanna O’Connell recently wrote, there is a fundamental difference between multi-device/multi-channel and cross-device/cross-channel. “Multi-channel” is buying several channels concurrently to broadcast a message (think “spray-and-pray”), whereas “cross-channel” is reaching an individual across a range of touchpoints along the customer journey. The latter requires an accurate and scalable identity solution, not just the ability to run media on desktop and mobile. With all of the chatter around cross-device, multi-screen, omni-channel, etc., it’s easy to forget what an identity-based cross-device solution can enable.
Cross-device identity, versus multi-device reach, gives marketers the opportunities to do things like truly frequency cap across devices to control brand exposure and manage brand sentiment. Brands can also personalize messages and tell a story through sequential messaging. Marketers need to create a consumer-first experience, and that requires an identity-centric solution, not a device-centric one.
Doing the Homework
When the dust settles, there will be one or a few universal cross-device monikers still standing, but with every platform out there today checking the “We have cross-device!” box, marketers will need to do their homework before they select a cross-device partner that isn’t exactly what it says it is. That “box-checking” is what is turning this once-niche market into a potentially commoditized market, but that doesn’t meant there isn’t value to be had.
Before marketers sit through the two-hour pitch from a potential cross-device partner, they should spend a few minutes asking themselves and the vendors some simple questions around scale, accuracy, and the depth of data to separate the pretenders.
I’m curious to hear what both marketers and tech vendors think about this cross-device commoditization occurring in the market today. Let me know if you have any comments!
