Why MarTech needs to consolidate

A key trend to emerge from the MarTech event in San Francisco this year was that MarTech will eat AdTech. This will ultimately result in the consolidation of the market. In Dave Morgan’s presentation:

“He discussed six implications of that — including the scary prediction for many adtech vendors that intermediaries-to-intermediaries, which constitutes 90% of the digital ad market today, will shrivel, and only intermediaries-to-principals (consumers and marketers) will thrive.”

And here is why…

According to chiefmartech.com the number of tools available in 2016 stands at 3,874 an increase of 2567% since 2011. Ultimately marketing is all about connecting businesses with consumers, supply with demand. It’s about relationships, experiences and great products. Of course we need great technology to assist this process. However, too much technology gets in the way of what’s important — building strong customer relationships.

In an Information Age, customer relationships are data driven. That means there is a load of personal data floating around this landscape. Most people will not have heard of these companies. This is an enormous risk for both the end-business and the end-customer. The risk of data leaks, the risk of eroding trust and the risk of faltering customer relationships.

Consolidation in the MarTech world is important as we strive towards more one-to-one relationships between customers and brands. But we also need higher levels of transparency of how personal data is used to ensure personalised relationships are based on trust and thus sustainable.