Our series continues as AdExchanger reached out to several executives from the agency side of the ecosystem and asked the following question:
“Given the increasing complexity of ad technology needed to service clients – particularly in digital media buying -, and ad tech companies need to build a service layer to activate its tech, where does the agency of the future draw the line for its own services? Does the agency become a ‘sourcing master’, if you will?”
John Montgomery, COO, North America, GroupM Interaction (WPP) answered:
“It’s a good question and in truth the line gets drawn according to the strategy of the agency in question.
An agency could decide to outsource everything. The rational might be ‘why build our own technology if there are tons of experts out there able to do a great job, many of whom have greater resources than our own. This way we can cherry-pick the best in each category.’ I suspect that most agencies fall into this category, where ‘buy it’ will be seen as the most expedient solution.
GroupM’s philosophy is that digital data is turning out to be one the most important assets we can develop to make our clients advertising more effective. We believe that its critically important to develop the technology stack for data management that touches our clients advertising performance and pricing data and own the process around this. We think its simply to important and sensitive to outsource.
To this end GroupM and Xaxis (GroupM’s Audience Buying Company) have developed their own technology to collect, optimize and store advertising data on a proprietary Data Management Platform which allows us to optimize cross-platform digital campaigns.
Outside of the critical areas where we believe we need to develop the technology and own the process, we partner extensively.
We have a substantial team whose specific responsibility it is to identify data and technology partners who can enhance our technology offering and this team build and nurture these relationships.
These partners are critical component of our success.”
Read more:
- Anthony Rhind, co-CEO, Havas Digital
- John Montgomery, COO, GroupM North America (WPP)
- Scott Hagedorn, CEO, Annalect (Omnicom)
By John Ebbert
