What is MadTech?

The term “MadTech” might evoke images of the AMC show, Mad Men, which illustrates a wild and untamed advertising industry of the 1950s.

In reality, it doesn’t have anything to do with that era — well, except for the advertising part, of course.

(It also doesn’t refer to executives of New York’s Madison Avenue, which is who the term “Mad Men” reportedly describes.)

Actually, MadTech is a relatively new term used to describe something quite different but incredibly important: the convergence of online marketing and advertising technologies. You can download our ebook on this topic, here.

Because while marketing and advertising companies used to live in their own separate worlds, each offering unique tools and results for publishers, the line between the two has started to blur.

This shift in the landscape may be confusing at first, but it ultimately offers major benefits for publishers looking to better understand their potential customers, activate first-party data, and drive revenue from advertisers.

So, let yourself get swept up in the madness of MadTech.

Here’s what you need to know.

A definition of MadTech

The term MadTech was first coined back in 2015 by marketer consultant David Raab. He shared this MadTech chart via his Twitter, noting that MadTech combined the best assets of marketing and advertising technology. For example, it brings together the personalized, individual reach of MarTech with the massive data pools of AdTech.

Raab also wrote of this MadTech convergence in an article:

“Even a fully integrated MarTech stack can’t deliver a wholly consistent customer experience. Advertising still plays a major role in a customer’s brand experience. Moreover, advertising itself is becoming increasingly personalized and interactive. Consumers don’t make a distinction between marketing and advertising interactions. And to meet their expectations, neither can marketers.”

The solution, Raab proposed, is the inevitable convergence of digital advertising technology and marketing technology to help companies “deliver a unified, consistent and highly personalized experience across all touchpoints.”

Why MadTech is beneficial for publishers

There are many benefits of this new MadTech world for publishers, including these five:

1. Increasing personalization at scale: Publishers can harness the direct customer data from their owned platforms, like their websites and emails, and then use that data to launch personalized ad campaigns that nurture relationships and drive leads across touchpoints.

2. Delivering more value to advertisers: MadTech takes publishers beyond traditional data, targeting, and audience segmentation solutions to help ad partners launch successful campaigns and meet their goals. And, in turn, publishers can drive greater ad revenue from their inventory.

3. Streamlining your tech stack: Publishers can get overwhelmed by the amount of AdTech and MarTech options out there. As a result, they might pile too many solutions into their stack, causing their data to become disjointed, their processes confusing, and their customers, well, misunderstood. Since MadTech combines the best of AdTech and MarTech, it can present publishers with one, comprehensive platform for their data collecting and targeting needs.

4. Breaking down internal silos: With that singular platform comes a more centralized and connected organization, making valuable customer data easily accessible across departments and campaigns.

5. Preparing for the cookiepocolypse: Publishers and advertisers have long relied on third-party cookies to track customer behaviors across the web. But those cookies have already been disabled on Safari and Firefox browsers, and are about to meet the same fate on Google Chrome browsers. As such, publishers and brands will start having to collect and activate their own first-party data through one-to-one, owned channels like email. MadTech solutions will allow marketers and publishers to more easily navigate this transition and exercise even more control over their customer data.

How to get started with MadTech

AdTech and MarTech are intersecting. If publishers want to survive — and thrive — they have to be ready to retool their marketing efforts with a new, combined approach to advertising and technology platforms.

There’s one solution that publishers can use right now to get started with MadTech: multichannel messaging. It allows marketers and publishers to reach customers at scale in real time with personalized content meant just for them.

Multichannel messaging can also be monetized, helping publishers diversify their revenue sources and build direct relationships across high-engagement channels like email, push notifications, websites, and news reader apps.

What makes personalized, automated multichannel messaging possible?

Email.

Think about it. It’s an opt-in channel that delivers first-party data based on each individual user — not the browser they’re using or the device they happen to be on. That’s why, as a unique identifier, email is one of the most precious pieces of data you can collect about your customer — providing a more comprehensive view of their digital footprint and online behaviors.

Check out this video where I discuss the importance of email for owning your audience user data:

Email is the go-to bridge between advertising and marketing technology, and it’s the greatest tool today’s publishers have at their disposal. That is, if they want to master the new world of MadTech and get ahead of the competition.

Are you ready to be part of the MadTech revolution? Reach out today to get started.

This article originally appeared here.