The obsession around consolidation has grown from a mild din to full-on shouting match over the past couple of months. The amount of hackneyed pieces written about the subject, as well as the IPO frenzy, have been too numerous to count. It's a scanning process these days as more and more posts are churned out by the trade machine.
We in Europe can't afford to get caught up in the "swinging-for-the-fences" lottery that seems to permeate every discussion around ad tech in the US. We can't think about hyper revenue growth, we have to worry about the fundamentals of running a profitable business. That's just the way it is in the media space in Europe. With that in mind, we wanted to focus our agenda on the realities of the market here. It would be a disservice to our community if we didn't address the big changes happening in our industry.
Our agenda this year is unsponsored, and as such it affords us the opportunity to invite the best and brightest on stage to discuss the big themes of the day.
ATS London 2013 opens with a panel discussing the alignment of enterprise marketing and advertising technology. This panel will be chaired by Damian Burns, Director of Global Agency Sales, Google; and we are delighted to have Anatoly Roytman, Managing Director, Accenture Interactive, EMEA and Mark Read, CEO, WPP Digital on hand to debate how the industry will unfold over the coming years, from the perspective of the most senior people in our industry.
Over the past twenty-four months we have seen big enterprise marketing players slowly encroach on the traditional media buying territory by buying social, search and display tech to help build these new marketing stacks. Coupled with the shift to data and technology in media buying, existing players need to rethink their positioning and models. As media buying becomes more data-driven, will we see consultancies, already entrenched with clients, try to eat more of the traditional agency business? How do the big holding groups work in this new environment? This panel will try to address this and more.
A lot of big subjects are being covered on the day. Mobile is particularly interesting at the minute. It remains a huge opportunity for independents to stake a claim. Now that desktop display is slowly getting wrapped up by the trading desk, mobile could well be a fertile ground for the ITDs and the rest. We will have an in-depth panel examining the trading mechanics of mobile buying with specific presentations from buy and sell side vendors.
The other big theme of the day is customisation. The platforms being chosen at the agency level are now required to have some customisable piece, whether its bid algos or open APIs. The agency trading desks are becoming increasingly more sophisticated. This clearly has an impact on those servicing agencies. How do you work with ATDs in that environment?
This all becomes even more complicated, especially if large chunks of spend have been earmarked for programmatic only. There will be no media plan. How does a third-party buyer get access to budget? These are massive considerations for an industry that has dined off the media plan since digital media spend became a major feature at agencies. Again the question arises around how third-party vendors and buyers work in this new dynamic.
Much of the automation debate has centred on traditional desktop display. Outside of the world of IAB banners, the big opportunity for traders is in programmatic native. The two companies likely to dominate this space, namely Twitter and Facebook, will take the stage on September 10 to discuss the opportunity for the buying community.
We will also have a themed "6 of 6", with a big emphasis on customisation and technology particularly in Europe.
Our agenda is now live on the event site. The early bird runs out next week - on Wednesday, August 28. If you are going, you'd be advised to get your ticket as soon as you can - as there is only a limited number of tickets available. We look forward to seeing you there.