Specialization of the specialists: Growth among the digital media acronym sea

How does online ad spend surge to $50 billion in 2015 when there are so many acronyms?

9 months ago I transitioned from marketing a SaaS BtoB company in the digital advertising ecosystem, to marketing the leading online BtoB data engine. I was exposed to acronyms completely foreign to me. SSP, DSP, PII, RTB, JSON, ATD- I was swimming in the alphabet soup of innovations that continue to propel the digital media space. After compiling a revised list of acronyms (see below) and incorporating them into my already expansive vocabulary of industry-specific lexicons, I quickly observed the following: We are an industry obsessed with ‘platforms’. Maybe it stems from the fragmentation of online technology solutions or our utopian idea of streamlining the complexity in executing a digital advertising campaign, but we continue to embrace the concept of specialty platforms that ‘bring it all together.’

At some point there needs to be some consolidation within these specialties. As innovators, we need to develop solutions that extend beyond a simple point solution for a specific audience. True value will come from the systems that fuse buying with the selling, and provide increased speed to market, improved customer relationships and revenue lift for both sides. For example, what if you could target a specific audience across the 3 categories of the purchase funnel (demographic, purchase and intent) while packaging-in branded data from a trusted provider like Nielsen… all without having to log into multiple platforms. That simple capability would weed out some of the acronyms you currently work with.

In addition to consolidation, we need to think about reducing costs. While innovation continues to inspire the digital landscape, we must remember that when more technologies, more people, and more complicated processes are introduced- the cost of doing business goes up. What if a data owner could sell their data across multiple industry-leading media buying platforms by implementing one system… as opposed to integrating with each and every stand alone media buyer. Would that help preserve IT budget? Would overhead and workload decrease? It seems to me that encouraging handshakes between specialists or, even better, have specialists own more of their ‘specialty’, will ‘bring it all together’, keep costs down and lure offline advertisers. 

What will happen when the specialists are eradicated? Will the ever-growing list of digital acronyms whittle away, or will consolidation lead to more and sexier acronyms we haven’t yet dreamed of? Getting from $31.30 billion to $50 billion in 4 years doesn’t seem that daunting if we remain laser-focused on building utopia and innovate beyond the simple ‘specialty’.

Glossary of Digital Advertising Acronyms*email me if you have more to add to this list ([email protected])