You only need to look at the ever popularly referenced LumaScapes to understand why a whole new industry of digital consultants has established itself in the last 18 months. The proliferation of technology in a rapidly evolving digital landscape has paved the way for specialists able to help clients navigate their way through the confusion and clutter. Adele Wieser (pictured below), founding partner, CoLab Media Consulting, speaks to ExchangeWire about the rising popularity of consultancy and how it is spanning the digital marketing industry.

Why now?

The media industry has continued to evolve rapidly over the past 10 years, with digital technology driving the major changes we’ve all seen. A decade ago, few would have confidently predicted that mobile devices would become the de facto for media consumption; or that practises originating in search engine marketing would permeate media trading in general. Yet, that’s where we are. And as publishers worldwide nurse their print titles through their twilight years, other traditional media channels like TV, outdoor, and radio are also mapping their digital transformation journeys.

Such significant change to the landscape creates massive uncertainty for media companies, huge opportunity for technology vendors, and a dizzying number of considerations for a marketer. All have the foreboding message ‘evolve or die’ ringing in their ears; and for most businesses, the cost of hiring in-house experts in each of the emerging digital fields is far beyond their reach. This is why so many look to bring on independent, external consultants to help make more informed strategic business decisions.

The adaptive agency

From the very inception of internet marketing as we know it, agencies made many of the early moves, educating and advising their clients on the potential of advertising within a fledgling industry. Many of the clients who jumped in early reaped benefits by building disciplines ahead of their competition, and agencies benefitted from the higher fees they could charge for this specialist work.

Seeing agencies offering consulting services in marketing technology today is arguably just formalising something they have always done. Most clients still don’t have the same level of expert resources that an agency can offer, nor are they exposed to as many of the vendors in the industry as an agency routinely is. As custodians of a large pool of clients working across multiple industries, agencies are in a good position to garner well-rounded knowledge of what does and doesn't work for their clients.

Why then is there so much eye-rolling about agencies wearing the ‘consultant’ label? One significant reason may be that agencies, whether warranted or not, are often seen as putting their own interests before their clients. Consulting implies transparency and impartiality yet recent trade press has revealed certain agencies using nefarious ways of generating revenue (often using marketing technology to do so). The usual excuse is that these practises have come in response to clients squeezing fees, but the net result is a breakdown of trust which is not the ideal foundation for a consulting outfit.

The inquisitive marketer

Marketers know they must also make digital core to their businesses and are now thinking more holistically about how technology can generate significant gains. As a result, they are questioning many of the links in the chain and finding that certain functions may be more sensibly handled in-house, giving greater clarity to the role of their external partners.

We already see a number of 'advertiser trading desks' operating in a similar function to more well-known 'agency trading desks', planning and executing the strategic campaigns across what is, initially, programmatic display, video, and even social.

However, replicating the successful trading functions that exist in agency businesses is not as simple as one day waking up and deciding that you’ll in-house the operations tomorrow. Many of the advertisers that have done this have gone through a process that spans months to years, co-ordinating across numerous teams within their businesses.

To rapidly influence and drive change within these businesses, digital consultants are hired to lend both their knowledge of their market and expertise to help build out these business plans and operational processes, all the way from idea inception to execution.

The innovative publisher

For publishers, the threats are larger than those of their agency friends and evolution is no longer a question, it’s an imperative. It’s been widely publicised that there have been seismic shifts happening in the publishing landscape – the decline of print, the digital video market stealing budgets from TV, and users shifting media consumption from standard desktop to mobile devices. However, for many publishers, the fear that keeps them awake at night is the now highly fragmented, global and technology-fuelled marketplace in which they are competing.

The players now sitting at the table have expanded past traditional content publishers to include the likes of digital native publishers, mobile applications and the behemoth technology players, Facebook and Google. Couple that increased competition with the shift from volume buys to cherry-picked campaign-relevant impressions and you can see the dire state in which many publishers find themselves.

This rapid increase of competition has bred a willingness in publishers to adopt new technologies rapidly, as they try to stem the flow of revenue from their core business. The development of native marketplaces, and even co-operatives, are examples of how publishers are taking charge to change the shape of the space.

Data enhancement and utilisation, and ad tech stack design, will become a key focus for many publishers over the remaining months in the year. Similar to marketers, publishers are also leveraging digital consultants to help expedite these projects, bringing in the knowledge, skills and experience independently to help their businesses pace faster than the current rate of market change.

The independent consultant

Bringing in specialist consultants is in no way a new trend. Businesses have been leveraging consultants for countless years covering a varying degree of disciplines. The inclusion of digital consultants into the roster means that businesses are able to quickly hire in expert teams to help them easily navigate through the changes they wish to make. In a market where the specialist pool is small and the cost of hiring and retaining those specialists are also high, bringing in a digital consultant is a viable and quick way to acquire talent. Herein lies the rise of the independent digital consultant.

The challenges outlined above are in no way a definitive list of the conversations we have daily; they are merely a snapshot of some of the broader themes. It’s this diverse thinking, problem solving latitude and willingness to help our clients cut through the clutter that draws people, like us, into this consulting space. Fuelled by a strong passion for technology and the evolution it drives, and focusing on the core values of education and activation; as consultants we are able to help our clients not only keep pace with the ever changing marketplace, but to also help them take steps to evolve the space further to their benefit.