Advertising magic: $2B disappear from AdTech market in Gartner Magic Quadrant | Criteo

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Advertising magic: $2B disappear from AdTech market in Gartner Magic Quadrant

Gartner published their first Magic Quadrant for Ad Tech 2018, by Andrew Frank and Lizzy Foo Kune on the 11th October 2018 (doc# G00341478). The title is misleading.

A vanishing act

Advertising technology (AdTech) is already 25 years old, yet the technology stack used by marketers is barely ten years old, still burgeoning and evolving quickly. After much M&A activity, most players combine several functional areas (including DSP, DMP and SSP), which means we’re now seeing the emergence of advertising platforms.

Those advertising platforms makes the AdTech industry notoriously hard to evaluate in a standardized way. For instance, the display Lumascape is quite crowded even though display is only one part of AdTech.

However, of the countless AdTech players, the recently-published Gartner Magic Quadrant for Ad Tech 2018 only plots eight players on the quadrant itself which makes the report title misleading; it should really be called the Gartner Demand Side Magic Quadrant.

Recommendations to AdTech buyers

  1. Start with your marketing goals, such as awareness, consideration or conversion.
  2. Work out your specific objectives and KPI’s, for instance, views or return on ad spend.
  3. Evaluate potential providers on differentiating criteria such as geographical coverage or by their ability to address the full shopper funnel.
  4. Carefully consider data aspects: are the providers proactive on data privacy (GDPR, CCPA AB375)?
  5. Select a point solution to integrate in their marketing technology stack or choose a turnkey provider; there may be more than one way to achieve your goals.
  6. And remember, there’s rarely a magical solution – even though Criteo comes close!