Insider's View: Ad Tech & MarTech Q&A with Lindsay Rowntree

Lindsay Rowntree is Head of Content at ExchangeWire, which provides global data and intelligence on marketing technology, advertising technology, and programmatic advertising. With deep regional focus across EMEA, APAC, and LATAM, ExchangeWire delivers actionable market intelligence on emerging models and technology. Lindsay brings an extensive background in digital media and programmatic display advertising to that role. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

1. Can you tell us about your background and expertise in ad tech and martech?

Before ExchangeWire I spent six years at Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG), the global media agency within Publicis Groupe. I was part of the biddable media team — starting at entry level and finishing as Director of UK Search.

My roots are in paid search, but I've always been drawn to digital media more broadly, so I dabbled in paid social and programmatic display along the way. At SMG I led a large team of search specialists, constantly pushing to innovate and hit demanding client targets.

I've always been fairly technical, so my role had a strong technology focus. I was heavily involved in identifying, trialling, and onboarding new technologies for clients — which is what pulled me deeper into ad tech and martech. How traditional and digital media fit together has always fascinated me, and that led naturally to a strong interest in attribution, analytics, and cross-channel integration.

2. What is the mission of ExchangeWire, and how does your role as Head of Content support it?

The mission is to provide actionable market intelligence on emerging models and technology. ExchangeWire sits at a useful vantage point in the market — high enough to see broad trends and their industry impact, but close enough to the ground to remain practically relevant.

Coming from an industry background, my job is to expand the reach of that intelligence: consistently delivering insightful, engaging content that keeps our loyal readership coming back, while also growing into new markets, new topics, and a wider cross-section of industry voices.

3. What do you see as the single most disruptive force in ad tech and martech?

Mobile. And you have to remember just how many forms it takes when you talk about it as a disruptor. The mobile industry has taken a fair amount of criticism — there are genuine engagement problems and a persistent lack of mobile-specific formats. A lot of early mobile advertising was simply desktop thinking shrunk down to a smaller screen.

That remains an issue, but mobile is so much more — particularly when you consider its power in combination with other marketing channels. Back in 2012, brands were experimenting with Aurasma's augmented reality, using smartphones to bring newspaper ads to life. It was impressive, but it was seen as a gimmick at the time and didn't go far.

Fast forward a few years and augmented reality isn't a gimmick anymore — and crucially, it doesn't exist without a smartphone. We're approaching a world where every newspaper and out-of-home ad can be brought to life through a mobile device. The extraordinary success of Pokemon Go is proof that people will readily look through their phones to interact with the physical world around them, and brands will find ways to capitalize on that. Mobile is still so new — in many ways we haven't even seen the beginning of what it can do.

4. What are the biggest challenges facing ad tech and martech today?

The convergence of marketing and advertising technology is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. MarTech vendors want to become ad tech players and vice versa, and the technologies are blurring together faster than ever. That convergence is being driven significantly by marketers themselves.

Marketers are recognizing that they need to be custodians of their own data and genuinely maximize its value. That realization is reshaping business structures — previously siloed teams like marketing and IT are working far more closely together, often alongside newly established data science teams, to drive business value from the very first ad impression through to the hundredth repeat purchase.

The opportunity for ad tech and martech companies lies in evolving alongside marketers and helping them reach those goals. These vendors are in a powerful position to educate the market — but they actually have to do it.

Marketers are taking back control and they don't want to be confused or misdirected by hockey-stick graphs, pretty pictures, and jargon. More and more, they want to understand precisely how something works and how it will ultimately help their bottom line. Vendors need to help them achieve that transparently.

5. With your paid search background, what trends do you see ahead for that channel?

Again, it comes back to mobile. Shopping, location, apps, voice, and images.

Marketers have been slow to recognize that mobile is rapidly becoming the search tool of choice — and, much like mobile programmatic advertising, mobile search spend lags well behind actual search volumes. A quick look at the Google AdWords Keyword Planner illustrates the gap: in June 2016, 54% of global searches for the term "washing machines" came from mobile devices. Yet marketers have long convinced themselves that their particular product or service will never be purchased on a smartphone, and treated mobile investment as unnecessary.

That mindset has to change. Those 54% of searches may not all represent intent to purchase a washing machine on a phone right then — but if a brand isn't visible during those initial research phases, it may as well not be visible at all.

Google has been working to help marketers understand mobile's value, and things are improving, but there's still a long way to go. Beyond mobile broadly, the more interesting question is how users are searching through mobile. Voice recognition has matured to the point where speaking random queries into your phone on the street is completely unremarkable behaviour now.

The mobile web is also becoming increasingly image-led, driven in large part by the influence of Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Search engines will likely work more closely with marketers to incorporate imagery into ads in ways that drive higher engagement. And Google's Instant Apps announcement has real implications for how search functions in the app advertising space.

It's a development that will differentiate Android from iOS meaningfully on the app front — but more importantly, it will converge the mobile web and in-app worlds, evolve tracking and targeting across cookies and device IDs, and force marketers to deliver a consistent user experience across both their mobile web and app assets.

6. ExchangeWire focuses on EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. What are the key differences in digital advertising across those regions compared to the U.S.?

Cultural and economic differences have a significant effect on how digital advertising develops in each region, and it's important to stay conscious of that.

APAC is genuinely far ahead technologically, and that shows in digital advertising. Japan, for instance, is transforming one-to-many channels into next-level one-to-one marketing — using number plate recognition and car make/model identification on the streets of Tokyo to deliver personalized OOH ads. That wouldn't work in EMEA for a number of reasons, but partly because the region simply isn't at the same level of technological adoption. It's not a capability issue so much as a cultural one — media isn't consumed in that way in Europe… yet.

LATAM is further behind still, but it is absolutely a region to watch. Major ad tech companies are already opening offices there, taking their time to understand what has worked in more established markets and applying those learnings as they move in. The early results have been promising.

The U.S. remains a leading market, but American advertising businesses would be the first to acknowledge it isn't perfect — and they do look to other regions for inspiration. A number of European businesses have expanded into the U.S. with notable success.

The underlying truth is that every region faces the same fundamental challenges — at different stages and to different degrees — because advertising is ultimately dictated by consumer behaviour. If consumers don't like something, they'll respond in similar ways regardless of geography.

7. How should marketers navigate the increasingly complex vendor landscape and choose the right technology?

It entirely depends on how sophisticated the marketer is. Before even beginning to evaluate vendors, a business needs to be crystal clear on its goals — across the whole organization, not just within the marketing team. Without that foundation, technology decisions get made for the wrong reasons. And don't get overly swayed by impressive-sounding terminology.

Once goals are established, the next step is identifying exactly which tools are needed to achieve them. Far too often, marketers spend enormous sums on technology platforms and end up using only 10% of available functionalities. That's a significant waste, and it happens constantly — to the direct detriment of ad spend. When businesses need to cut costs, advertising budgets tend to take the hit, when in reality the technology stack powering that advertising should be audited first.

For marketers without the internal resources to be heavily involved in strategy and execution, full-stack solutions are a sensible choice — everything is in one place, and the marketer doesn't need to understand the mechanics of how the technology operates, only that it does.

Standalone, best-in-breed solutions tend to be considerably more powerful for marketers who have a clear understanding of what they want to achieve and how. Sophisticated practitioners who are keen to push boundaries and experiment will typically pay close attention to new developments and be more deliberate about how they integrate them.