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Deus ex machina?

Starting in 1811, disgruntled English textile workers staged a series of protests, during which they destroyed the spinning frames and power looms, which had automated the manual labour they relied on for a livelihood. These protestors would come be known as Luddites, a word that has more recently been used in a derogatory fashion to describe individuals who oppose new technology.

Much like in the early 19th Century, today’s marketing industry is going through an existential crisis of its own as new technology automates the way we buy and sell advertising, communicate with customers and track consumer data.

In the thoroughly bourgeois setting of advertising, it’s unlikely that sales managers, creatives and media strategists are going to storm offices and destroy computers and servers—this would, after all, be an exercise in futility, given the increased prominence of cloud-based networks—but automation technology is a topic being avidly discussed across the industry.

At the Australian Digital Marketing Forum, Google Australia managing director Maile Carnegie said businesses that fail to reinvest in marketing—and, not surprisingly, particularly digital technology—are “cost-saving their way to decline”.

While bordering on chastisement, such sentiments aren’t unique to Google. Ask the executives working at the local tech players like Marketo, Brand Machine, Adslot, Datamine, Marketing Impact, MI9, Ubiquity and many others, and you’re likely to hear different variations of the same argument, with the general consensus being that a failure to automate time-consuming processes could result in businesses falling behind tech-savvy competitors.   

“Danger of a company not doing it?” ponders Marketo’s New Zealand country manager Rob Cooke. “Well, what’s the cost of a defected customer who went to the competition because they bought something from you in the past, but then never heard from you again? Or if they did with a ‘monthly email campaign’, the communication wasn’t relevant and personalised, so they didn’t feel valued?”

This is at the core of what ad tech players sell to marketers and agencies. Automation, the sales pitch goes, provides a means by which to expedite the process of mining insights from data and then using these to deliver targeted messages to consumers instantly.

At the Australian Digital Marketing Forum, Google Australia managing director Maile Carnegie said businesses that fail to reinvest in marketing—and, not surprisingly, particularly digital technology—are “cost-saving their way to decline”.

While bordering on chastisement, such sentiments aren’t unique to Google. Ask the executives working at the local tech players like Marketo, Brand Machine, Adslot, Datamine, Marketing Impact, MI9, Ubiquity and many others, and you’re likely to hear different variations of the same argument, with the general consensus being that a failure to automate time-consuming processes could result in businesses falling behind tech-savvy competitors.   

“Danger of a company not doing it?” ponders Marketo’s New Zealand country manager Rob Cooke. “Well, what’s the cost of a defected customer who went to the competition because they bought something from you in the past, but then never heard from you again? Or if they did with a ‘monthly email campaign’, the communication wasn’t relevant and personalised, so they didn’t feel valued?”

This is at the core of what ad tech players sell to marketers and agencies. Automation, the sales pitch goes, provides a means by which to expedite the process of mining insights from data and then using these to deliver targeted messages to consumers instantly.

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