How Martech and AdTech Bridge Customer Insights Across the Lifecycle

Traditional advertising is broken. Programmatic strategies that used to work no longer bear fruit and, if anything, run the risk of damaging your brand. Look no further than a spate of recent news stories, such as the trouble Mercedes Benz recently ran into with their video ads. No less than Procter & Gamble – the world’s largest advertiser – recently announced a $140 million cut in their digital advertising budget because of the risk of brand damage. This reduction in P&G’s digital advertising is part of a larger trend toward cost-cutting on digital marketing spending throughout the company, and the reduction is sending shockwaves throughout the programmatic space.

Brands need to increasingly provide individualized messages to their customers, and programmatic advertising does not easily serve that purpose. There needs to be a better way, which is why we shared the stage with KBM Group at the recent DMA &Then conference in New Orleans – to discuss how to solve the problems of real-time customer engagement through the convergence of martech and ad tech. As part of our efforts to unify these two worlds, we have partnered with data management platforms (DMPs) like KBM Group’s Zipline product and identity resolution providers such as LiveRamp from Acxiom. These partnerships allow us to close the loop between anonymous and addressable experiences across the customer lifecycle.

Integrating Martech and Ad Tech for Optimized Customer Engagement

Ad tech and martech have historically been managed separately within the organization. The reasons for this are easy to understand: ad tech dealt with anonymized data for digital display acquisition, while martech dealt with engaging customers that had self-identified and opted-in to receive ongoing direct communications. Because of this separation in use-case, ad tech solutions like DMPs and martech systems like campaign management solutions never shared information.

Then the empowered omnichannel consumer emerged. What began as a linear journey from anonymous to addressable became dynamic and multifaceted. According to research from McKinsey, 50 percent of all customer interactions now occur in a multi-event, multichannel journey. The way forward now is to integrate the anonymous audience acquisition capabilities of ad tech with the customer experience and retention functionality of martech.

This blended landscape is often called “madtech” to reflect that it’s a combination of the two types of solutions. Blending ad tech and martech together ensures that marketers can responsibly target their customers at any time throughout the customer lifecycle.

Integrating Martech and Ad Tech in an Open Ecosystem

By integrating the Redpoint Customer Engagement Hub™ with data management platforms, we create the opportunity for a fully functioning digital marketing ecosystem. What that means in practice is that we can automate a bi-directional flow of data between the two solutions. Data on addressable customers from Redpoint is anonymized and used in DMPs for look-alike modeling and intelligent audience acquisition.

Once new custom audiences are created in the DMP, that data can be sent to Redpoint to enrich customer profiles for further digital insights. This additional information can include audience behaviors such as frequent site visitors or purchasers – loyal customers that might possess specific characteristics marketers need more visibility into. The digital insights into anonymously addressable behavior from DMPs can inform future direct communications such as email, direct mail, social posts, and many others. Bridging these two solutions empowers marketers with a deeper view of the customer across various touchpoints.

And the fact that Redpoint can close the loop with digital insights being brought back into the platform for customer engagement is distinct. Most integrations between martech and ad tech tools involve addressable customer data only being onboarded to a DMP. Our integration allows data to flow back-and-forth between a data management platform and the Redpoint platform, providing new information from one system to another through identity matching processes. This enhances long-term engagement and ensures that marketers can reach addressable customers whenever and wherever they need to.

The fact that martech and ad tech have existed as separate systems for so long is because data has historically not been shared, nor has it been easily accessible until recently. With changing consumer tastes and lifecycles, brands can ill afford to ignore the convergence between martech and ad tech. Redpoint isn’t ignoring this opportunity, and our integrations with DMPs ensure that brands can responsibly address customers no matter where they are in the customer lifecycle.  As data volumes increase, and programmatic budgets become at risk, brands that can fully leverage the capabilities of a DMP within an integrated marketing ecosystem are the ones that stand to win.

Download Solution Brief: Redpoint Global and KBM Group Partner Solution

Get Started on Getting Ahead

Schedule a conversation and learn how Redpoint® can put your goals within reach.

Get Started on Getting Ahead

Schedule a conversation and learn how Redpoint can put your goals within reach.

Email Your Molecule
Do Not Sell

Submit the form below to set a "Do Not Sell my Personal Information" preference within our persistent customer records.

Meet with a Redpoint Partner
Hello there!

Please fill out the form below and we will reach out to you.