Ad tech marketers have valid opinions too
In this guest post Cat Prestipino says she is fed up of being marginalised by other marketers and publications just because she works in ad tech.
Warning: I’m about to get up on my soapbox.
There’s a divide brewing in the marketing industry in the B2B marketing sector. On one side, marketers who work for ad tech vendors. On the other side, all the other B2B marketers. The most unfortunate thing is that it’s not the marketers who have drawn these lines in the sand but the people who they work with.
In the past, I’ve been told by an event organiser that I couldn’t attend an event because I worked for an ad tech vendor. It didn’t matter that I work for a display advertising vendor, it was a search marketing event and I was in-market for a new PPC platform. Ad tech is ad tech. The worst part for me was the event organiser actually hit me with “well you’re not really a marketer, are you?”
Thanks Cat for you view
I can understand your frustration. All marketers young and old need to be aware of whats new and whats working otherwise your relevance will eventually be questioned.
just remember who you are and what you are doing.
Your the disrupt-er and you are trying to cut the lunch of the traditional marketing and media sector. No wonder the resistance.
I do have a problem with a lot of the ad tech in the B2B space. I work in in financial services. It has made a lot of promises and in B2B has largely failed to deliver.
Most of what i read from Adtech comes from the US where market size, conditions and culture are vastly different.
Since the GFC ad tech has become the cheap alternative to hiring intelligent skilled marketers with real budgets with the not surprising results from mindless email and mobile marketing campaigns with almost no thought or budget to the creative process and no sales back up what so ever has been poor.
I had a meeting with a marketing manager of a major consultancy form with a 6 figure marketing spend.
All she could talk about was lead generation. She actually didn’t understand any thing else let alone her owns companies position on thought leadership and so LG was her entire filter.
Ad tech can be clever but its a small part of a larger picture and if the Adtech industry acknowledged that you might go along way to recognizing why there is resistance.