Last week, I published a new report called "The Marketing Technology Meet-Up," which examines the consolidation trend of ad technologies and marketing technologies and helps marketers understand how to use it to their advantage. Why is this happening now, you ask? Three reasons: customer expectations for brand interactions are (still) increasing; vendors want a bigger piece of the marketer's technology budgets; and the prevalence of investments in contextual experiences.

We see the convergence happening in four areas:

  • Data, because the single view of the customer is as tantalizing as it is elusive.
  • Media, which half of marketers say they struggle to buy correctly.
  • Measurement, as various methodologies provide vastly different performance results.
  • Operations, where siloed marketers find more and more reasons to work together on coordinated programs.

In the report, we highlight three companies who are already benefiting from a more unified approach, including a telco creating more customized communications; an online retailer with more efficient campaign targeting; and a financial services firm achieving better conversion rates on their website. We also offer some next steps for marketing leaders to begin to centrally manage their technology to get better results.

Forrester subscribers can read the report here and anyone who is interested in learning more can schedule an inquiry with me or any of the analysts who lent subject matter expertise to the report: Jim Nail (media); Susan Bidel (ad publishing); Jenny Wise (mobile); James McCormick (digital intelligence) or Shar VanBoskirk (editor).