Arun Kumar, global president of IPG’s ad tech company, Cadreon, writes:
The ad-tech ecosystem has given rise to the belief that tech is easy. And when I say tech, I am including data, which is almost inseparable in today’s landscape. The ‘tech is easy’ hypothesis comes from the belief that it’s all as simple as the flick of a switch, elimination of full-time employees and improvement of efficiency (with cheaper costs to boot). And while some of that is accurate, most of it is not.
But here is a truth that I find very hard to admit but is backed by some fact: tech is hard. As an industry, we love talking about how seamless tech is or how it would drive smartness to the point that we often skip past the realities of process or implementation. It is hard to automate and harder still to sustain while managing change.
And this problem exists in the intersection of tech solutions with marketing and advertising. There exists a fundamental, philosophical disconnect between the marketing/advertising and the technology worlds.