The annual dmexco conference in Cologne is almost upon us again. The year so far has offered up a plethora of hot talking points within the advertising industry – but will they still be the talk of the town, or the halls of the Koelnmesse next week? ExchangeWire asks industry experts what they expect to be the key themes at dmexco 2017 and they certainly had plenty to say.
What does Marc Pritchard have to say?
Gavin Stirrat, MD, Voluum
Reassurance of safety, security & transparency
"In the tumultuous year since dmexco 2016, brand safety disasters for Google and others, fake news and big data usurping democracy, ANA’s scathing report on agency transparency, and the seemingly ever-growing ad fraud and viewability crises have dominated the automated digital media news. It’s unsurprising that buyers are reportedly reviewing their programmatic spend in this apparently most dystopian of ecosystems. So what to expect from dmexco 2017? It seems very likely that any ad tech vendor worth their salt will be keen to use dmexco as a platform to reassure frightened marketers that their particular solutions provide more safety, greater security, and are truly transparent and trustworthy. But we need less talk and more action for an industry which is often guilty of developing more collateral than product. A truly ethical approach to business has to be at the core of everything a company does in order to initiate real change. Marketers will continue to demand full transparency of media costs and margins from their campaigns with actionable insights in order to demonstrate true value. The vendors who do this will still be around for dmexco 2018."
Ben Humphry, Chief Strategy Officer, iotec
Data accessibility & regulation
"dmexco acts as back-to-school for the digital marketing ecosystem. With the 2017 session right around the corner, there are two specific themes which we believe will take precedence during conversations: i) data accessibility and manoeuvrability, and ii) global privacy compliance with GDPR looming. Previous years' themes focused on identity cross-device, so these new topics lend themselves nicely to the continued innovation the industry has seen in addressing the overarching goal of all marketers. It is more important now for us as an industry to prove the value of programmatic outside of the walled gardens – and to do so, we must think globally."
Keith Petri, Chief Strategy Officer, Screen6
Ensuring the publisher's future
"During our time at dmexco we'll be keen to learn more about newly launched offerings that are helping publishers drive their businesses forward. For too long, there has been an imbalance of power in the industry weighted towards the dominant buy-side at the, quite literal, expense of the sell-side. Mobile ad spend continues to rocket, but publishers are still struggling commercially, despite being the glue that holds the entire landscape together. Free content is an expectation, and the buy side seems to focus on the value generated by mass-market premium publishers only. It’s no exaggeration to say that the market is now flooded with DSPs, but this hasn’t helped solve the key issues publishers are facing – if anything it’s added confusion, as publishers struggle to determine the genuine partners from those operating merely as sales houses. It’s a worrying situation that needs to be remedied; and that’s why we are hoping dmexco will be a showcase for new solutions that support and benefit publishers so we can begin to realise equality in the industry."
Max Pepe, VP Marketing, Mozoo
Data regulation & ad blocking
James Collier, Chief Revenue Officer, Rainbow
With GDPR looming, it should be 'location', but it won't be
"Apart from a speaker topic on the future of vehicle advertising, which touches on GPS, nothing on the dmexco agenda discusses location. Location data should be top of minds for the industry at this point, especially with GDPR just around the corner. Marketing attribution and transparency will likely emerge as the big hitting topics out of dmexco, as they remain an insecurity for marketers. High-quality location data would improve both of these issues. It benefits the accuracy of attribution and improves transparency, therefore adding value the wider industry."
Mark Slade, MD, Proxama
Making advertising safer & more effective
Sacha Berlik, Managing Director EMEA, The Trade Desk
Delivering better value to advertisers
"Three topics that are likely to be looming front-of-mind are, unfortunately, triggered by challenges to the industry in 2017. Firstly, viewability and video ad performance are back to the forefront as GroupM, amongst others, roll-out new standards by which media owners are expected to deliver. This is a conversation which has been building all year as advertisers put further pressure on their agencies to deliver verified and quality inventory. The industry shouldn't see these as a negative but, rather, a correction to ensure inventory bought and sold is what advertisers and consumers rightly expect it to be. Secondly, there is some nervousness around a tough H1 for many agency holding companies, as advertisers take a more conservative view of investment with Brexit looming and general uncertainty in the macro-economic sense. There are some indications that certain CMOs are under pressure to make more from less, now more than ever. As a result of these two rather gloomy trends, I expect conversation to be positive around how incumbents and innovative companies can work together in order to deliver better value and results to advertisers and, importantly, drive incremental growth going into Q4 and 2018. I believe the way to do this is through driving more verifiable engagement with advertising, not least as the branded content market continues to grow and evolve."
Daniel Fisher, MD (Europe), Playbuzz
Innovation & growth during transformative times
"I’m very excited to see the session with one of LinkedIn’s founders, Allen Blue, which will focus on how businesses can ensure they have the right people, skills, and cultures to innovate and grow in this period of unprecedented transformation. Like many people in Cologne, I will be looking out for the latest in ad tech developments, but even more so how this technology will rise to one of the biggest challenges facing our industry: trust."
Henry Clifford-Jones, Director of Marketing Solutions, Central, Southern Europe and MENA, LinkedIn
What's next for AI
Andrew Bloom, GM EMEA, Sizmek
The next wave of data-driven marketing
"One theme we're expecting to prevail at this year's dmexco, is data quality. Being able to reach the right customer, at the right time, with the right message is often cited as the Holy Grail of marketing. However, in today's increasingly digital world, there is a volume of data being generated that is almost unthinkable in its scale and many businesses are struggling to keep up. Similarly, in an age where brands have a seemingly endless amount of information on their customers, irrelevant messaging will no longer be tolerated. With GDPR on the horizon, every marketer's main concern is now how to collect accurate and up-to-date customer data. I'm personally looking forward to hearing how other brands are preparing for this next wave of data-driven marketing."
Steffen Preuschoff, VP Sales Europe, Addressy
Connected & compliant real-time data will take centre stage
Ken Parnham, General Manager Europe, Near
What about what the brands are doing?
"Whilst dmexco’s conference schedule is chock-full of discussion around emerging technologies such as machine learning, AI, and voice, I’m interested most in what advertisers are doing successfully in the 'here and now'. Less theory, and more action! I find it compelling and exciting to hear what brands are doing right now: for instance, how might a margarine brand take the challenge of voice search and ‘own the fridge’, to how advertisers are changing and adapting creative for today’s consumer."
Jo Sutherland, UK MD, Fetch
Tangible opportunities in AI & machine learning
Claudia Collu, Chief Commercial Officer, MainAd
Dialogue dominated by brand safety & fraud
“dmexco continues to provide a key platform for industry leaders from around the world to debate the latest hot topics, and I believe brand safety and anti-fraud will continue to dominate any dialogue at an event like this, as it’s a subject that always garners such strong opinions. Also high on the agenda will be the age-old debate over viewability, but with an emphasis on user engagement – if people are seeing my ads – how long do they see them for? Consumers are becoming more adept at avoiding ads, so ad blocking and alternative revenue approaches like subscription will remain an important conversation. Finally, I suspect inventory traders will be discussing supply path optimisation in order to keep optimising the relationship between sellers and buyers."
Andy Evans, CMO, Sovrn
The future redundancy of the bidder
“There have been some recent discussions bubbling up in tech circles around the use of header bidders and, in particular, concerns around their transparency and the reduced quality they bring. I believe this will continue to be debated in the halls of dmexco alongside the prediction that, in time, bidders may become redundant, with the industry looking towards a more sustainable path for programmatic. Like many digital ad trends, programmatic has evolved rapidly and has fast become an essential tool. The next stage is increasing adoption of native programmatic, which has the potential to boost scale and efficiency. And with native programmatic advancing rapidly – with 28% growth in UK native ad spend – it provides a remedy to the transparency issues that have long been associated with automated ad buying and an ability to provide brand safety guarantees.”
Alex McIlvenny, UK Country Manager, Ligatus
Synergy between attribution & DMPs
Manu Mathew, Co-founder and CEO, Visual IQ
The differentiation between AI & machine learning
"AI is going to be the phrase on everyone’s lips at dmexco, just as it has dominated this year’s media headlines. However, despite the excitement conjured by images of robotic futures, aside from IBM Watson and a small number of other companies, the ad tech industry is not yet using AI to its full potential. AI terminology has been adopted by marketers because it sounds impressive, but it's machine learning that is being used in it's place. The two have become synonymous with one another, but it's important to recognise they are not the same. AI is a computer's aptitude to think without programmed instructions. The focus for marketing needs to be on the algorithms that underpin AI, which make programmatic advertising possible. That is not to undervalue the importance of machine learning, but marketers need to refer to the tech correctly and differentiate the key concepts so that consumers have the opportunity to understand it."
Chris Dobson, CEO, The Exchange Lab
Consolidation & scaleability
Matt Byrne, UK Director, FastPay
Marketer focus on platform-agnostic solutions
"Buoyed by a year’s worth of public campaigning by P&G, marketers are more aware and less tolerant of the negative trade-offs that have been implicit in people-based marketing solutions to date, especially the fact that key identity assets remain locked within the walled gardens or lost in a complicated tangle of vendors and point solutions. This year at dmexco, marketers will bring a keen, scrutinising eye toward platform-agnostic solutions that can give the brand maximum transparency, portability, and ownership over identity data and resolution."
Kathy Menis, SVP of Marketing, Signal