With digital marketing conference DMEXCO seemingly back to full strength after an initial post-covid slump, we spoke to some of the businesses that attended the event in Cologne, Germany, to find out their thoughts on the 2024 edition.
Thomas Park, SVP Product Strategy, Adform
“Marketers from around the world have flocked back en masse, with sessions diving into the evolving landscape of programmatic advertising—especially in areas like CTV and retail media, as well as more established technologies, such as AI, which continue to prove game-changing. The next challenge for marketers will be seamlessly integrating these channels and innovations into a unified omnichannel strategy.”
Alvaro Pastor, CMO, EXTE
“DMEXCO 2024 highlighted the ongoing rise of AI, a trending topic across multiple industries. However, some concerns were raised about how the competitive push for AI advancement might conflict with environmental sustainability goals. In addition to AI, other prominent themes at the event included user privacy, Connected TV (CTV), creativity, and the expanding role of retail media.”
Eric Shih, COO, Cedara
“DMEXCO is the last big tentpole of the year and provides a unique platform for discussing trends and pressing issues within the European market. This year sustainability has still been high on the agenda. Given its Europe-centric nature, it’s an ideal venue for addressing regulatory changes that have a significant impact on the region.
“The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), set to take effect in 2025, is an expansion of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), and it requires thousands of companies across the EU to measure, report, and disclose their Scope 1-3 carbon emissions.
“The media industry, particularly the digital media supply chain, is directly implicated by this regulation because of its significant energy consumption. Companies across media, advertising, and technology will need to align their operations and supply chains with these regulations, ensuring that the platforms, partners, and publishers they work with can provide reliable carbon emissions data. As this requirement cascades from advertisers down the media supply chain, it’s driving new conversations about media sustainability. And DMEXCO, with its gathering of digital leaders, has provided a crucial forum to discuss how businesses can adapt to these new regulatory standards.”
Luke Fenney, SVP Connectivity & Ecosystem, Europe and Americas, LiveRamp
“Once again, DMEXCO has cemented itself as a premier European-focused adtech and martech event. AI was a key topic around the halls while CTV continues to feature. Disney with their double decker London bus was hard to miss. There was plenty of speculation around Google’s plans for user-led privacy controls following their decision earlier this year to not deprecate third party cookies in Chrome. With the growth of data collaboration, we also saw a lot of retail media solutions, discussions around authentication strategies as well as first party data.”
Dan Slivjanovski, Chief Marketing Officer, DoubleVerify
“AI continues to transform the industry and has been the topic of many conversations at DMEXCO – with this year’s motto of “Prompting the Future”. AI has been heralded as a miracle for the industry – with promises of increased efficiency, dynamic creative freedom, and superior campaign optimisation. However, it’s also fuelling online mayhem in the form of MFA proliferation, mis- and disinformation (deepfakes, for example), and ingenious ad fraud schemes. DMEXCO has provided a strong forum to address the holistic impact of AI on our industry and, ultimately, help global brands continue to drive toward better transparency and superior business outcomes.”
Mateusz Rumiński, VP of Product, PrimeAudience
“The key message coming out of DMEXCO this year is to be optimistic. The industry has started to move the conversation on from the cookiepocolypse and negative economy, and is beginning to look for solutions which will help them to actually thrive in the future.
“Unsurprisingly, AI is getting a huge amount of attention, not only from big players like Google and Microsoft, but also from publishers, advertisers and ad techs across the industry. It’s inspiring to see how this innovative technology is already moving the industry forward, and it’s still just the beginning of Generative AI in advertising.
“More broadly, the fact that Google hasn’t shared any news about the timeline of cookie-choice, has left us all questioning our priorities looking ahead to the end of the year and early 2025. Despite this, things are progressing towards a privacy-preserving future, which is undeniably a good thing.”
Chao Liao, Commercial Strategy & Revenue Operations Lead, Permutive
“It was clear at this year’s DMEXCO that industry optimism is growing as the realization sets in that Big Tech monopolies, particularly Google, have stifled innovation for too long. There is tremendous opportunity to reimagine advertising for the better – with a stronger focus on improving consumer privacy and experience, creating more opportunities for publishers, and providing a more transparent and performant supply chain for advertisers.
“The future lies in building a better data ecosystem that balances consumer privacy, publisher revenue, and advertising effectiveness with transactions based on authentic, consented publisher signals. With these signals, advertisers are significantly expanding their reach, maximizing sales, and reducing CPAs, publishers are maximizing their audience data to drive revenue, and users’ data privacy is respected.”
Daniel Volož, Country Manager, DACH, RTB House
“At DMEXCO 2024, the atmosphere was optimistic, with the industry looking beyond the challenges we’ve seen so far this year, towards solutions that drive future growth. AI took centre stage, with both tech giants and ad tech providers showcasing its transformative potential. Generative AI was a particular focus, as it is already moving the industry forward – and it is still just the beginning.
“The privacy-first ecosystem was another key focus, despite the lack of clear timelines from Google on cookie deprecation. The industry remains committed to balancing consumer privacy with effective targeting, a trend expected to continue to the end of the year and early 2025. Responsible media and sustainability also emerged as critical themes, with brands increasingly prioritising ethical content placement and environmentally conscious strategies.”
*This content features clients of Bluestripe Communications, owned by Bluestripe Group, publisher of NDA
