Media Agency's Role in Evaluating New Technology

Media planners are required to surface, evaluate and manage innovation and currently have a range of tools to help them understand digital landscape audience reach. Despite all the advances made however, the process remains dauntingly complex.

Growth in technology innovation is on the rise. The National Venture Capital Yearbook 2013 highlights that although we are not at the “bubble” investment levels witnessed in 2000, there is continued growth in new technology investments. A main driver of this growth is ubiquity, where anyone can learn, deploy and manage a technology-based business while open source and cloud are enhancing the process.

Media planning teams have a range of tools to help them understand digital landscape audience reach. The Compete Media Planner (CMP) scores sites using actual online behaviors of 2 million consumers. Comscore Media Metrix allows a planner to measure audience composition and performance within key user segments. The Technorati Top 100 tracks the most influential bloggers. AngelList is a platform for startups. CrunchBase (developed by TechCrunch) is the free directory of technology companies, people, and investors that users can edit.

Moreover, a new class of companies is popping up to attempt to aggregate and highlight start-ups and newer innovations. Ryse, DMR Index and PlzADvize are developing planning tools and indices to aggregate and showcase reviews and ratings for start-ups. The goal is to foster connections between developers and decision makers.

Ryse (in Beta) is developing a platform to connect big brands and agencies with emerging media, platforms and technologies, hoping to help startups find customers. DMR Index is working on highlighting and reviewing technology companies, from the latest startups to established media vendors. PlzADvize (in Alpha) is so new it doesn’t have a fully baked website. Yet, they are asking the same questions that the others are asking, namely, “how are digital marketers expected to navigate this crazy landscape?” They’re banking on the collective wisdom of the crowd (anonymous ratings or reviews) and its ability to categorize the complexity of the technology explosion.

With all of this activity, the role of the media agency is more important than ever before in sourcing and evaluating innovation for clients. Best-in-class media agencies have a unique understanding, both within and across clients, of innovative approaches already tested and the associated performance and value/price of innovation opportunities. Newer approaches to highlighting and connecting innovative technologies to the marketplace will certainly be leveraged. However, the true challenge is evaluating the innovative technologies against a set of alternatives and in context of the client’s greater business goals, managing innovation from test to learn to scale.

Cary Tilds is Chief Innovation Officer for GroupM.

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