Media Agencies Need To Buy On Best Tech, Not Just From Those In The Same Company

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Emma Mackenzie
By Emma Mackenzie



Media agencies need to make sure they’re buying technology such as programmatic capabilities for their clients based on the best available tech out there, and not using specific tech just because it’s in the same business or holding company, Dominic Trigg, senior vice president and general manager in Europe at programmatic company Rocket Fuel, has warned.

“I would urge the media agencies to be open to buying on the best technologies,” he told B&T during his visit to Australia recently, “rather than being tied to inferior technologies because they’re part of the suite that they have at work. I’d urge agencies to be agnostic, and look for the best results for their clients.”

It’s also up to clients to actually look at the return on investment they’re having with the tech too, not just relying on the agency, as some marketers are getting burned by agencies who claim to have the best tech, but actually just have a guy entering things into a spread sheet.

“The programmatic landscape over here, I believe, is in a little bit of that early stages where there’s a lot of myths around and a lot of technology terms being used,” he told B&T in a recent article, “and anyone can roll up and say ‘I’ve got a technology, therefore you should take me seriously in the programmatic space’.”

The biggest thing clients need to look for is whether their sales and impact gone up, said Trigg, and if it hasn’t, look into it.

“I do think that clients should become informed of the programmatic landscape. The best clients are the ones that are fully informed.”

Trigg and his Rocket Fuel team also deal a lot with display advertising – which has had a hard knock in recent times for its how impactful it is – particularly with trying to eliminate the myth click-through rate is linked to the impact of the ad.

“For what it’s worth, we spend a lot of time…trying to debunk this myth that click-through is somehow connected to the impact of the ad,” said Trigg.

“Most of the time, it isn’t.”

However credit where it’s due, he said most of the industry already realises this as it’s trying to move away from the last-click attribution model – a model where the last media channel a consumer visits to purchase something is the one that gets all the credit for the campaign.

A few months ago we spoke to data company Datalicious who believed display advertising wasn’t getting the credit it deserved.

“People simply just see display ads. They don’t click on them but they leave an impression similar to other offline ads such as TV ads or outdoor posters,” said CEO Christian Bartens at the time.

“In the last click model all the other touch points that came before that, that helped you make a decision, that made you aware of the product in the first place… see no credit whatsoever. They’re completely neglected.”

The future of display ads is constantly being debated, with Microsoft close to quitting the display ad business and LinkedIn saying display ads won’t be on the site in the future.

However, there are still many believe display ads work and need to be considered in the marketing strategy.




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