Few years ago, marketing and advertising used to live separately. Marketing, advertising and technology job opportunities seemed not to be connected at all and professionals needed to have very distinct skills, appropriate to each job role. But with time, the line between the marketing and advertising processes started to blur, and the job market followed the trend.
This article will through these major topics:
The convergence between advertising and marketing happened after the ever-increasing reliance on data and the interconnectedness brought by technology. The evolution of marketing and its connection with advertising resulted in the birth of a new term embedding the 3 words: marketing, advertising and technology.
MadTech was first coined by the marketer consultant David M. Raab in 2015 as a consequence of marketing and advertising technology intertwining themselves and bonding because of data. The difference between the two was not as clear anymore. As Raab states:
Even a fully integrated MarTech stack can’t deliver a wholly consistent customer experience. Advertising still plays a major role in a customer’s brand experience. Moreover, advertising itself is becoming increasingly personalized and interactive. Consumers don’t make a distinction between marketing and advertising interactions. And to meet their expectations, neither can marketers.
Finally, “MadTech” is the union between MarTech (Marketing Technology) and AdTech (Advertising Technology).
Advertising often involves reaching out to a broader audience, including people who are not aware of a company’s products and their benefits. Advertising content to a non-specific audience leaves little room for personalization and effectiveness. So, today, companies use advertising to target those users who actively seek information or look for interaction with the brand. Details and data collected through the interaction with the customer allow a more targeted advertising.
Platforms for AdTech:
Online marketing platforms are able to store detailed information on interactions with users which enables marketers to segment the audience in categories and personalize the communication.
Platforms for MarTech:
MadTech is relevant today as technology is quickly advancing, and significant innovations in online marketing and advertising have followed. Thanks to technology, big brands have a huge amount of stored data allowing them to form a much richer picture of the audiences to target – what offers would be most relevant, when customers are most likely to buy, and the optimal combination of marketing tactics required for success.
MadTech marketers are already building systems to offer a unique and hyper-personalized experience at the right time and in the right context, for every customer. Even newer technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence are helping to step further and predict what customers might want to buy before they even have decided to do so.
With the rise of investments in technology and automation, companies will need to shift from a traditional approach to a more digital-oriented one where MadTech will be the new rule and not the exception. According to Gartner’s 2021 CMO Spend Survey, technology is a priority for 26% of marketing managers interviewed as it represents “a path to proximity and customer recovery”. Companies will therefore invest more and more in training on the platforms and tools that bring together marketing, advertising and technology.
Education is what separates you from your goals, it’s what’s between you and who you want to become.
It’s still about the people. For all businesses, understanding people remains the strategic cornerstone. Since the advent of human-centric marketing, listening to your customers and their needs has become the most important skill marketers are required nowadays. Customer behaviour, principles of psychology, empathy, active listening, research methods are some of the required skills and knowledge to understand how people make choices, how they think about brands and how they are influenced.
Read and analyse data to make smart decisions. Making sense of MadTech starts with data and insights, and only the first one is readily available today. A big majority of marketers and advertising professionals today reports that finding actionable insights in the data is a pain point. Therefore, tracking and measuring brand effectiveness and advertising effectiveness are now highly required skills to be able to make smart decisions about future marketing actions.
However, according to the IAB Europe Human Capital Digital Environment 2019 research, 75% of recruiters struggle to find candidates with MadTech knowledge or specialization on the market. This represents a market mismatch where, on the one hand, recruiters cannot find the best fitting candidate, and students or professionals, on the other hand, lack crucial skills or knowledge to enter the MadTech professional world.
The job market demand for technology experts is growing year after year. According to McKinsey &Company, the overall spending on technology could increase by more than 50% between 2015 and 2030. By 2030, they estimate that this trend could create 20 million to 50 million jobs globally. Good news for all the students and candidates passionate about tech and its implementations in each aspect of our lives.
Even agency influencers and marketers are positive about the increasingly influential role of technology in their businesses. In a study conducted in 2016 by Ipsos Connected, 66% of the involved agency professionals and brand marketers said technology made it easier to reach their audience and 55% stated technology is helpful to improve the customer experience.
The marketing and advertising world now needs professionals who have a more digital-oriented knowledge and skills. As a result, the fast growth of technology implementation offers more job opportunities day by day, around 7 million only in Europe right now.
And according to Sirking Research the trend is destined to continue in 2021 – 60% of marketing leaders anticipated to increase marketing technology spending in the next 12 months. As remote working is becoming a “normal” part of the current workforce, many marketing teams are relying on technology to collaborate on campaigns and manage work remotely.
To sum up, the job market is now looking for professionals who have a complete set of skills in marketing technology and advertising technology. At GAMS, we believe the best way to acquire such tech skills is by practically using the tools MadTech jobs require.
The video above shows some tools, jobs and potential career paths in MadTech, and explains how GAMS can help students exploring the MadTech world and have the opportunity to use these tools to acquire practical knowledge and experience.
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