Math, and A Bit of Common Sense

The Monday afternoon session, “Technology Visionaries Sound Off” kicked off with a frightening realization: I should have taken more math classes. (I opted for propositional logic.) According to moderator David Scott Carlick, MD Vantage Point Venture Partners, the marketing holy grail has evolved from hitting a demographic (math), to hitting a CPA (more math) and finally to hitting a CPW (Cost per Whatever). CPW requires an understanding of all of the above, and therefore, involves a heck of a lot of math.

In a frightened state, I expected the panelists, which included Brian O’Kelley, CTO of Right Media, Peter Adams, CTO of VendareNetblue and William B. Schaeffer, CTO of Revcube, to send my head spinning with math problems about trains hurtling toward each other at different speeds.

As it turns out, these tech visionaries care most about common sense. Here are a few examples:

Technology should make us efficient. There was agreement that technology should improve the efficiency of online advertising through various aspects, including transparency, such as the RightMedia exchange, or through the automation of RevCube’s multi-platform campaign management.

There was some disagreement on the role of the human in automation. Each of the CTO seems to have an internal struggle with the “who’s smarter - the human or the computer?” question. On one hand, the computer does not err. On the other hand, the computer needs to be given human instruction.

Technology should streamline efforts. Over the past 10 years, our industry has been very good at building silos. What we haven’t done is built a mechanism to bring the silos together in a meaningful manner.  Schaeffer painted a picture of the average media manager running around with various spreadsheets, each reporting on a particular medium, and none dovetailing with the other. The poor client might get a weekly update - if he is lucky.

Furthermore, Schaeffer suggests that advertisers take an additional step to observe how various ad campaigns affect each other. For example, how does a display campaign affect a search campaign’s effectiveness?

Technology should make us smarter. Finally, Adams suggested that technology today should help us solve one of the hardest questions of all: who is that person on the other side of the screen? He emphasized that we are moving from impressions, to profiles, which are based on behavioral, psychographic data. “We should be matching the right consumer with the right advertiser, at the right time.”