On February 19th, we held a webinar in which we discussed both the immense potential of consolidated buying platforms as well as considerations and requirements for achieving such integration. If you missed this event, you can watch it here on demand.

During the webinar, our guest Joanna O’Connell, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research presented the results of new commissioned research on Navigating the Road to the Consolidated Buying Platform. While the study began with interviews focusing on the consolidation of display buying through DSPs, it became clear over the course of the research that marketers and media execs are actually thinking in much larger terms about consolidated platforms—wanting truly integrated cross-channel solutions for media management, buying, and attribution.

Joanna believes that the future of digital media is audience-centric, programmatic, and data-driven, with the growth of real-time buying demonstrating this marketplace shift. Consolidated platforms that streamline reporting, consolidate buying, and enable cross-channel management are a natural progression of this evolution. They can offer agencies and advertisers new operational efficiencies, improved targeting and campaign performance, and more accurate reporting and insights. In this presentation, Joanna painted a picture of an industry ripe for consolidation but in need of a clear path to get there.

So how do we get from simply buying in various media channels to a seamless, data-driven, multi-channel approach to media management? According to the commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, the first step is consolidating reporting, which leads to more effective measurement as well as operational efficiencies for more accurate analyses. Beyond that, each agency and advertiser must evaluate how consolidating data, audiences, and measurement could lead to better buying, attribution, and ultimately marketing insights for their own business.*

* "Navigating the Road to the Consolidated Buying Platform," Jan 2013

Posted by Emily Wright, Product Marketing Manager