It’s not as if ad tech’s universe is beginning to collapse, but some of the biggest players are beginning to consolidate. A day after marketing cloud giant Salesforce.com
announced the acquisition of hot data-management platform Krux, performance retargeter Criteo announced the acquisition of retail site-oriented audience exchange HookLogic.
The
consolidation is long overdue. There simply are too many single-point, me-too solutions in the marketplace that are often difficult to differentiate. While the rollups are unlikely to reduce the
amount of hyperbole, they will at least concentrate it within a more manageable cluster of big, integrated programmatic ad-technology players. Which, of course, means there will be an inevitable land
grab for the next tier of programmatic technology solutions to rush in and fill their place.
On the plus side, the consolidation will mean that big marketers and agencies will have
to do less shopping to figure out their solutions. On the downside, they will have less flexibility for mix-and-matching services that fit their organizations and business models.
But in a
world of increasing complexity, slightly more simplified solutions are going to win -- until a more complicated approach comes along and proves it performs better.