Ecommerce is set to dominate the adtech industry in the next year according to industry leaders gathered at last week’s Adtech: The European Perspective event on Clubhouse. NDA partnered with Paul Gubbins, NDA columnist and Head of Strategic Partnerships at Publica, to host the event, the first in a planned series focused on the technologies and trends driving adtech.
The event featured speakers including Xaxis Global CEO Nicolas Bidon; Tina Lakhani, Head of AdTech for IAB UK; Nigel Clarkson, Global Chief Revenue Officer at Hivestack; Ashley Bateman, UK Sales Director at Unruly; and Simon Halstead, VP, Exchange & Supply Int of Verizon Media.
NDA will be taking a look at some of the key themes that emerged during the session and how they impact the market.
As Paul Gubbins said, ‘Terry Kawaja gets excited about two things at the moment, CTV and ecommerce”.
It’s been an incredible year for those in ecommerce. Mix in the effects of a global pandemic and worry about how the advertising market will perform in a cookieless future and it’s no surprise that as Lisa Menaldo, Co-Founder, The Advisory Collective said, “Some have seen ten years’ growth in the last three months.”
Gavin Stirrat, Chief Operations Officer, Adimo, said: “Ecommerce has been a growing area for the last 20 years but events over the last 12 months have really accelerated its importance to brands and its relevance to consumers who, at various points over the last year have not had much else choice other than to adopt ecommerce.”
Speakers pointed to an increasing adoption of shoppable technology within adtech whether that be through programmatic and display advertising and on social media, offering different monetisation opportunities.
It’s a really nice place to be right now and it’s a place where there is a lot of innovation. Obviously, Amazon is one of the monsters in the space and there are a huge amount of companies popping up around Amazon’s tech ecosystem. We’re going to increasingly see traditional adtech companies increase their ecommerce capabilities, because of some of these challenges posed by the cookie issue.”
Tina Lakhani, Head of aAdtech at the IAB concurred.
“Ecommerce really is an area of great focus for us at the moment. Many will see it as a way of addressing the issues brought up the cookies crumbling. But in the last year, we know that 57% of consumers say they will continue with online shopping once the pandemic is over. It’s a big opportunity for the industry. It’s also interesting to see how it’s being adopted from the publishers perspective as an alternative revenue stream.”
Menaldo suggested the adtech industry should also be looking at how to work with data from loyalty schemes like Nectar.
“Whoever you have a loyalty card with, they know what you have purchased, they know what you want, they know what you’re going into a store to do. This data is going to be hugely important.”
