Last month the AOD client services teams supporting SMG and ZO officially joined these agencies as full time employees. There they form the foundation of new, centralized programmatic teams fully embedded within the organizations. For SMG, each of the 3 agencies have named heads of programmatic to lead these new operations and the nearly 60 people I formerly managed now getting settled in the Chicago Spark and Starcom offices, as well as in MediaVest New York. The rock stars in Detroit, offspring of the original 'AOD' remain just as strong of a team and are now 100% dedicated to the MediaVest business. Last, as I recently posted, I too have joined SMG Global to head up the programmatic effort on the management level. No longer managing a team will take some getting used to but so much of what my remit has been carries over into what my new role requires.

Myself and a core group of believers have spent the last 4 plus years advocating and evangelizing, sharing best practices and POVs in an effort to pull our industry forward, beginning first by modernizing our clients programmatic marketing strategies. Our group in its first iteration, like all new channels before it (Search, Digital, Television) was incubated at the center in order to master the new tools and hone our own strengths. Now is the time to take the practice of data driven audience strategy creation and activation directly to the client teams. In doing so we close any remaining knowledge and skill set gaps. For some, this is a long time coming - for others it's still too soon. Regardless of where you stand - if you still believe that there's a better way for marketers to tell their stories, a way for them to maximize their media cost efficiency while taking ownership of their campaign's IP than you're going to want to double down on this next chapter.

Change is the only constant

When I got into digital advertising 15 years ago Amazon was an online book retailer and Google didn't exist. Today, VivaKi is a AWS customer and Google's into … everything? The pace of innovation in technology, CE and online business has been frenetic and our behaviors as consumers have become nearly as unpredictable as they once were predictable. In 2008, when VivaKi started this movement we all call ‘programmatic’, it signaled a seismic shift in not only how we invested media budget but in what we learned in doing so. The thing is, we did so at a time when the entire media landscape was/is shifting as well. It would be one thing if Television viewing and content creation and distribution remained unchanged; if we weren't now spending 20 minutes a day on social networks publishing, pushing and pulling written, short and long form content on multiple yet disconnected screens. Arguably the most significant moment in the story of advertising (today let's call it The Rise of Empowered Addressable Marketing) coincided with pure chaos. What makes this moment so 'fun' is that not only do we have our typical challenge of how to best tell our stories in the fast changing landscapes of digital - we now have to decide what changes our own business models must make in order to cross through this shift successfully.

Nearly every business has been effected by digital and most have in some way evolved from their original operating model. Today, SMG staffs the most seasoned programmatic operating teams in digital, designing audience strategies while pulling the levers on over a dozen of the industry's leading technology platforms. With last quarter's acquisition of RUN, an upstart DSP with future-forward data management capabilities, we too now own technology. I suppose you could want for Amazon to still just sell books and for Google to have stayed a search engine, but you wouldn’t. We rely too much on the powerful offerings these companies have grown to provide and if we’re being honest, we’re grateful they took the risks to move outside of their original models when they did. We think in the same way our clients too will be grateful for our decision to bring programmatic marketing into the agency model.

The New Definitions

In digital we see the classification of new entries to the landscape take front and center in our conversations. Thank you Lumascapes. Native, dOOH, Set Top Box, MTA, and on. However, when was the last time we reclassified an existing element in digital? When have we redefined the companies effecting and being affected by the realities of empowered addressable marketing? I propose that given we're now operating a new model we must then work under new definitions of the companies and services acting within that model.

Empowered addressable marketing, the essence of this programmatic shift, is made possible by bringing together the core elements of media, technology, and data. Thus, in order to be a viable provider within that model you have to fit within the definition of what a media, technology, and data company now is.

A Media Company

You are a media company when you produce and distribute owned content. Yahoo! is a media company as is Google and AOL. You are not a media company if you broker media. If you are an intermediary between open exchange, long tail network or an aggregator of purchased media you are not a media company, regardless and in fact especially if the word ‘media’ is in your company name.

An empowered marketer operating in the new model just doesn't have a need for a 3rd party entity to go out and aggregate media for them. They understand media access, first look, upfront discounts, PMP, programmatic reserved and even arbitrage. If, by the new definition of media company, you find yourself outside of the new model you have to find a way to provide value either via technology or data.

A Technology Company

You are a technology company when you offer a marketer the ability to self-serve license your technology. You are not a technology company if you only offer managed service. For those former media companies interested in transforming their model to fit within the new this is a natural pivot. Many already have.

Turn was the original and today VivaKi has MSAs with TubeMogul and BrightRoll. We anticipate a greater rush of former 'media' companies now turning over their platform to be evaluated and driven by the empowered marketer. However, those former technology companies whose platforms were always out of the reach should now offer self service capabilities in order to remain relevant.

A Data Company

You are a data company when you provide your *strategic partners access to your data. You are not a data company if a marketer has to transact via media IO in order to leverage your data. The empowered marketer, again, may very well want to test the segments you provide but given the new model has no need to transact via media IO to do so. To fit in the new model your data should be decoupled from media entirely or the platform opened for self serve licensing.

All this said, should a data-only provider today be considering a pivot to a SaaS offering they have to know they’re entering an already crowded market. The media power-houses now providing tech along with the first generation DSPs all have significant marketplace traction and broad cross-channel capabilities. It’s a big ask of an operator of centralized programmatic marketing (like those now within SMG) to consider driving a data provider’s new technology solely to access their data, especially if it isn’t overly unique. One truth we've come to know in programmatic is that there is a very real point of diminishing return when you overload your platform portfolio. Operators of licensed tech have to be able to execute on those platforms as well or better than the owners themselves and that becomes a challenge if you ask one person to master 4+ pieces of tech.

*Some data providers, like Amazon and WMX, are offering valuable, proprietary customer data and technology combined. Some of these companies aren't going to be able to pipe their data beyond a short list of strategic partners, like a client's AOR for example. Others may not be able to offer it beyond their proprietary technology stack. This is where we are today in the shift but it can be managed. Having the access to this rich data is a feat in itself and although it can make the strategy and execution more complicated to work off of another separate platform it's nothing an experienced programmatic group can't handle.


The New Skill Sets

Sellers Redefined

As we redefine the companies within this new dynamic we have to expect the skill sets operating within the old model to evolve as well. In this week’s AdAge article ‘Ad Sellers Face Harsh Reality: Evolve or Find Another Career’, Michael Sebastian writes:

'Most legacy publishers are struggling to adjust to an evolving environment in which advertisers are no longer satisfied with just ad space in print or on the right rail of a website. They are demanding that publishers apply reams of data to target their ads, which, by the way, should appear within the stream of editorial content, get significant social-media promotion and be as bespoke as possible….. As a result, legacy publishers are taking a pickaxe to calcified sales departments. Positions are being eliminated and longtime staffers let go. But the turmoil is also giving rise to opportunities for sales talent that can think creatively and nimbly while being conversant with return on investment.'

For digital sellers, the ‘trade’ of being a strong relationship builder, knowledgeable of audience indexes and client initiatives, with an adequate depth of technical knowledge (say, AdServing and Tagging 101) is less applicable in this new model. Clients need help understanding how systems integrate and how first party data can be brought online. They seek trusted advisers who can design end-to-end solutions or at least paint the picture for how their business will function 2 years from now and advise them on what they need to do today to be ahead by then. Being a strong CPM negotiator with bankable relationships is a far less valuable talent today. You have to look no further than the handful of non-agency start ups that have taken media buying responsibilities from the AOR’s that owned that business for decades. These individual’s have been successful because they understand what this moment means for marketers and how to communicate it in an empowering way. More importantly, they’re adept at providing a value their agency hasn’t. Not until now.

Buyers Redefined

Like Sellers of Digital media, Buyers too are now redefined in the new model. Until recently, agency talent excelled if they were a strong selector and negotiator. They selected partners based on the definitions of the old model - how did one’s media value, audience indexing, and overall vendor compatibility stack up to anothers. However the role of selector takes on a different meaning when you’re now the operator of the vendor you’ve selected. There’s a new level of accountability for buyers that comes with this new definition. Simply put, there is no one left to blame when it's you pulling the levers - the make-good comes out of your pocket.

Likewise with negotiation, it's still very much important in the new model yet it cannot be your biggest strength. Not even close. Again, clients need trusted advisers who can provide the same level of unbiased consultation as the agency did. They seek solutions consultants, architects of this new addressable world, who can help clients define that trans-formative marketing strategy that will future proof their business. As such, agency talent still focused on selling cheaper CPMs year over year will be eclipsed by those that can sell value, beginning with that of their new centralized programmatic offering.

To incorporate these new skills agencies will push their talent to learn the new trade. They’ll also infuse their organizations with talent from the tech consulting and media sales worlds. The goal is to create a strand of agency DNA that can deliver on what the new model demands.


I'll be writing more about these topics this year and hope to spark some conversation with you all as we go along. It’s a big year ahead of us and an old model is changing for the better for all of us. It won’t be easy for those of us transforming but as they say, the pain of change is less than the pain of mediocrity.