Welcome to episode No. 4 of AdExchanger Talks, a new podcast on data-driven marketing. Let us know if you like it, and please subscribe via your preferred channel.
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Joe Zawadzki is an original gangster of ad tech, having founded multiple companies, including [x+1] and MediaMath, and angel-backed some 40 others.
In this episode of AdExchanger Talks, Zawadzki talks about the forces changing programmatic marketing, including the rise of header bidding and new access to retail data. He also describes the shifting road map at MediaMath and rates his own performance as CEO.
“The plumbing is done and people are ready for accelerated change,” Zawadzki says. “Programmatic has historically been quite confined to paid media. Now there’s a recognition that that underlying infrastructure and approach can apply to far more use cases than just B2B and prospecting.”
For proof, consider the roughly $2 billion worth of acquisitions in the last three months alone: Dentsu bought Merkle and Accordant Media, Salesforce bought Krux, Criteo bought HookLogic and Xaxis bought Triad Retail Media.
While public market comparables have had a depressing effect on valuations across the board, Zawadzki notes the frenetic deal activity and widening set of strategic acquirers (hello, China) underscores that the underlying trends haven’t changed. Consumers are getting more digital, while marketers and agencies are gaining fluency in software-led, quantitative approaches.
“You’ve seen these cycles in ad tech and mar tech,” he said. “Having seen maybe four of those oscillations in the industry, you definitely see … the long-term disruption ad tech and mar tech is having.”
This episode of AdExchanger Talks is sponsored by Google AdSense.
