'Agencies & Tech: Better Out Than In?', by Will Margiloff, CEO, IgnitionOne

Holding companies and their agencies do a lot of things very well (which explains the enormous number of awards they give to each other every year). Whether it’s amazingly creative, multi-faceted campaigns, expertly-timed tweets, or well-thought out advertising strategies – agencies constantly push the envelope and help their clients tell stories and influence audiences.
What about technology, though? As in big, complex advertising platform technology? Should agencies and holding companies build their own tech? Well, as a CEO of an ad tech company who has lived both inside (and now once again) outside the holding company world, I feel I have some insights to share on the topic.
I have been getting the question, “why did you go independent?”, quite a bit. Now, don’t get me wrong – our company, IgnitionOne, benefited in a lot of ways from being a part of one of the fastest growing agencies in the world. However, our technology existed (though was less evolved) even before we were acquired, back in January of 2010. For the most part, we existed as independently as possible from within the agency; but as a technology in such a situation, you run up against limitations. For us, our technology is ideal for large agencies and their clients, but we continually faced difficulties reaching that audience due to perceived conflicts of interest. So, while even if we had the best solution (which we believe we did and still do) we were limited in our potential.
For an agency, does it make sense to invest the time, money and resources to create an industry-leading cohesive technology? Is there the drive to invest the money needed? Are there the skills internally to shepherd a technology to lead the industry? Most often (but not all the time) the answer is “no”, but this is not a bad thing. Holding companies have strong core competencies and the need to invest in their people and expansion. These competencies and investments do not necessarily translate into a fertile ground for technologies with a goal of leading the entire market.
So, agencies and holding companies should leverage technology from external vendors, right? Yes, but what often happens is that this results in not just getting a single technology for a media channel, but getting several. Agency teams must then learn to use and juggle multiple technologies for every channel, including multiple demand-side-platforms, search platforms, cross-channel attribution platforms, as well as all of the emerging media management and optimisation solutions. This does not create efficiencies and does not better serve customers. Technology should make the agency more efficient in order to pass those efficiencies (read: savings) onto the client.
By selecting and partnering with the best independent technologies, an agency can gain efficiencies, increase stability and drive better results for their clients. I’m not even saying that the agency is required to go with an integrated stack that does everything (though it’s not a bad idea). I am saying that picking the best tech for each channel is an improvement on either trying to build everything internally, or by using every tech under the sun.
Agencies and holding companies need to do what they do best and focus on being strategic, and doing the right thing for their clients. Independent technology providers can make the necessary investments and agencies can choose the solutions that best meet the needs of their brands. When we all (holding companies, agencies and tech vendors) focus only on doing what is best for our clients, good things happen.