Advertisers are reducing the number of ad tech partners they work with to cut costs and run their media more efficiently.
Take device manufacturer Lenovo, which, in August, selected Adform as its preferred ad server.
Previously, the brand didn’t have its own contract with an ad server. Instead, it ran campaigns through whichever ad servers its agency partners used, said Rick Corteville, executive lead for Lenovo’s global media center of excellence.
But it became clear to Lenovo that “having all campaign information in one place is really important” for effective media management, Corteville said.
Lenovo isn’t alone in its desire for better data centralization.
Advertisers are increasingly looking for more control over their own data because it’s “critical” for effective marketing, said John Piccone, president of Adform’s business in the Americas.
Form up
In addition to its ad server, Adform has a data management platform (DMP) and a demand-side platform. (It also has a supply-side platform in European markets, but doesn’t currently have a sell-side business in the US.)
Lenovo’s partnership with Adform is limited to the latter’s buy-side ad server that responds to bid requests and manages campaign data on behalf of brands. Lenovo is already using Adobe’s DMP and isn’t currently looking for a new one, Corteville said.
What the brand needed was its own direct ad server relationship.
Running the same campaigns through multiple ad servers led to incomplete reporting. Different ad servers track different types of data in different regions at varying speeds, so by the time Lenovo had downloaded the data for analysis, “there [sometimes] were whole campaigns that weren’t being properly tracked,” Corteville said.
Without a complete “read” on data while campaigns are running, he said, “it’s really hard for us to make budget allocations and optimizations [with] confidence.”
But that uncertainty should change now that Lenovo will be keeping its campaign data in one spot, Corteville said.
Getting it together
According to Corteville, Adform’s customer support team has been educating the brand’s agency partners on how to use its tech throughout the migration, which Lenovo expects to finish by spring 2024.
From that point on, Lenovo’s media agencies, Dentsu and Assembly, will have to run its campaigns using Adform.
Lenovo considers its partnership with Adform to be a solid step toward its goal of in-housing and eventually building more of its ad tech stack.
But that’s not to say the brand plans to fully take over its own media buying anytime soon.
“We’re still going to be relying on agencies for the foreseeable future,” Corteville said.
