The AdTech industry has witnessed significant growth in recent years, but there is another industry growing rapidly and which could likely overtake AdTech in the future. MarTech, refers to the innovation in marketing technology outside the context of advertising, focused on experience and data-driven marketing. AdTech, on the other hand, refers to advertising technology focused on advertising and serving technologies such as ad-server and real-time bidding solutions.
In the recent past, more and more organizations are adopting MarTech to innovate marketing pipelines, infrastructure, and workflows, to achieve higher operational efficiency, greater insights and better planning for marketing budgets.
The image below, published by Scott Brinker, Editor, ChiefMartech, gives an idea about the scale and pace at which the world of Martech, is growing.
Scott mentions that the number of companies adopting MarTech has doubled over the last one year with the overall number crossing 2000. Expansion of the MarTech landscape indicates the evolution of marketing, the increasing role of technology in marketing and the heterogeneous nature of MarTech field.
Scott draws attention to key areas where innovation and success are clearly visible:
- Internet – Scott attributes the success of the digital world to the penetration and affordability of the Internet in people’s daily lives.
- Infrastructure – The transformation of data storage and presentation capabilities has enabled gathering and processing of data for greater understanding of consumer behavior. Scott says that most of this can be attributed to big data, cloud computing, and mobile/web app development
- Marketing Backbone Platforms – Platforms such as CRM, e-commerce engines, etc. have brought businesses closer to end customers even as they address pain points.
- Marketing Middleware – Data Management Platforms (DMPs), CDPs, and tag management software have enriched data with metrics that were not available earlier. These metrics have helped to improve operational efficiency and overall productivity for companies.
- Marketing experiences – Scott calls them the `front-office’ of marketing. These technologies revolve around customer lifecycle such as social media, email, and A/B testing
- Marketing Operations – Mostly associated with Business Intelligence, Analytics, Visualization and Data Science, marketing operations helps to interpret and find solutions
To summarize, even though a lot of action is happening around MarTech, the fact remains that there is huge potential for growth. We will likely witness a shift of focus away from AdTech towards MarTech.
