How can you upgrade your advertising technology?

Two important areas to consider: 1) Differentiation: try to understand the details of how the platforms in scope differ from each other. Four areas to consider: exclusive media inventory/supply; exclusive data/audiences; unique technology/capabilities across the end-to-end media management process; service level and account support; 2) Long term fit: in my experience, migrating from one AdTech partner to another is not an easy task, so it’s key to prioritize for the long term. When choosing which partner to work with, focus on their strategic vision and how aligned it is with yours, both from a company and industry perspective (i.e. how are they investing in your own category? How big and important it is for them?)

Two small points: 1) Integrating different ad tech solutions and getting them right is an uphill battle, especially with new updates rolling out every month. 2) From a strategic POV, it's important to understand your category audience and how it interacts on different platforms, and which ad tech solutions will be least worrisome in the future. This iterative approach can help you stay ahead of the curve.

When evaluating ad tech, you need to ensure you incorporate the cost of the tech into the ROI calculation. Ad tech can get expensive quickly. However, if you put the right tech stack together, it can pay massive dividends.

It's critical as you explore new adtech opportunities that you understand 1) who the customer is and 2) what is the problem you are trying to solve. Adtech as an industry is changing at a rapid pace, which presents the opportunity for first movers to increase marketshare.

As in all aspects of marketing, a portion of the maketing budget should be allocated to trials of new adtech. In the context of digital marketing, organisations can test programmatic Ad or CTV.

Upgrading your advertising technology is like evolving from a flip phone to a smartphone. Explore new adtech opportunities such as utilizing AI-driven chatbots for customer interactions, implementing dynamic product ads on social media platforms, or leveraging augmented reality (AR) for immersive shopping experiences. These advancements can revolutionize your advertising game and boost engagement with your audience, much like how smartphones transformed communication and access to information.

One of the biggest challenges that I see is creating a balance between maintaining code and developing new features. It's important that you consider this while developing your roadmap. Great tech companies dedicate resources to keep the code up to date with updates while also having resources to work on new beta features.

Optimize your content and advertising for voice search. For instance, Domino's Pizza utilizes voice search capabilities to make ordering pizzas easier for customers using voice-activated devices like Amazon's Alexa.