As a marketer, the need in understanding performance has been a catalyst when demanding transparency – online advertising, affiliate, events, etc. have relied on processes and technology that provide for it. The need for transparency goes beyond just understanding this, it is equally important to understand where and how the outreach was done, and ensure that regulations, compliance and brand safety are adhered to.
In the demand generation space, however, this has not necessarily been the case.
The demand generation industry has an intricate supply chain that has several types of businesses in the mix. The demand and the supply sides are often interfaced by lead brokers – conduits in the process, that parallel what ad networks did in the display and programmatic industry. When running demand generation campaigns, demand and supply side parties, often do not have visibility into who they are working with.
This ‘black box’ approach often leads to challenges in the supply chain – challenges include:
1. Marketers often do not have visibility in who is running the program, and where and how demand was created or identified. This creates significant risk considering a:
a. Lack of control over brand guidelines and safety
b. Lack of visibility when factoring regulation, privacy & compliance
2. Inherent loss in agility across the supply chain, leading to significant delays and cost overruns when running campaigns
3. Lack of feedback cycles inhibit adopting a data or performance-based approach – instead continuing to diminish returns and impact
4. On the supply side, businesses are inhibited to grow or mature capabilities and drive performance due to an inherent lack of data. This, in turn, leads to stagnation of solution and services that agencies and advertisers can leverage
These challenges are further exacerbated by antiquated pricing approaches that continue to increase the cost for agencies and advertisers, while invariably eroding margins for the supply side – this being an inherent aspect of any supply chain that relies on brokers to conduct business.
Driving change to provide transparency requires transitioning from an opaque supply chain to one where brands and publishers can engage directly in a more efficient manner. This inherently builds more accountability and, eventually, trust in the process. Additionally, partnering in the combined goal of delivering performance will ensure it is at forefront of all campaigns.
At Audyence, we are taking these challenges head on. Our Real Time Demand platform is focused on providing this foundation of transparency and trust to brands, agencies and publishers to create a more efficient and sustainable B2B demand generation ecosystem.
The Audyence RTD Platform provides the ability for businesses to:
· Collaborate and partner at scale
· Drive transparency across the process – be it demand or supply
· Independently make decisions on who to work with and at what price/cost
· (most importantly) rebuild trust and accountability by providing unparalleled access to data and insights
To know more about how Audyence is addressing these challenges, write to us!
