Despite the efficiencies, automation, and scale advertising and marketing technology bring to the online world, there’s no shortage of problems with these industries. Ad fraud, a lack of transparency around fees and commissions, and the GDPR are just a few of the external privacy issues they face today.
AdTech/MarTech vendors and agencies face a number of internal problems as well:
- AdTech and MarTech vendors: Maintaining a competitive edge over their rivals and delivering value to their clients.
- Agencies: Reducing commissions paid to vendors and intermediaries, eliminating fees associated with using white-labelled platforms, gaining transparency into media-buying processes, and maintaining control and ownership of their data.
During discussions I’ve had over the years with company leaders, from CEOs to VPs of Technology, I’ve found that apart from their own unique challenges, they all experience the same vicious cycle when it comes to their technology.
Can you relate?
1. Too Many Client Requests, Too Few Hours In the Day
It doesn’t really matter at which stage your product is in its life cycle, you’ll no doubt have an unlimited supply of new feature requests and changes proposed by clients. As your product and company grows, this amount of requests only increases, especially when you start attracting large, high-paying clients.
The hard truth is that no amount of venture funding or equity capital can buy more hours in the day. However, you can put that money towards development resources to build the features your clients are requesting and develop new tools to expand your client offering.
Unfortunately, this is often where you’ll encounter the second problem.
2. Not Enough Resources to Expand the Core Product or Build New Features and Tools
Regardless of whether you want to build the features your clients are requesting, expand your technology, or develop new tools, putting together the right amount of development resources is a real challenge.
On top of that you have the problem of maintaining the platform (performance monitoring and ensuring compatibility with the latest versions of APIs, etc.), which can easily eat up half of your available resources.
When it comes to increasing the number of development resources, most AdTech/MarTech vendors and agencies typically explore the following two options:
- Work with a body-leasing or generic software development company
- Hire developers directly
While these options may seem like an ideal solution at the time, they often bring with them a world of new issues—which leads to the third problem.
3. A Lack of Experienced and Skilled AdTech/MarTech Developers
Once you’ve identified that you need more development resources to push your technology forward and then gone about obtaining more developers, it won’t be long before this stark realization sets in—the developers have no idea what they are doing.
Designing, building, and maintaining advertising and marketing technology is not like any other area of software development; there’s a long and steep learning curve associated with understanding the complex inner workings of AdTech and MarTech platforms. It often takes a developer years to develop a strong command of this area, and hiring or working with inexperienced and unskilled developers has the potential to bring with it serious consequences.
We’ve had numerous clients come to us with an existing platform that was built by an inexperienced development team. Often, the code and the overall structure (certain processes that were not implemented according to industry standards, for example) were so unmanageable that we would have to scrap the whole thing and start again.
As the saying goes — “if you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur”.
So, What’s the Solution?
Each business is different and what works for one company might not work for another.
For some, adding another one or two developers with some AdTech/MarTech experience might be sufficient, while others may need a whole team.
However, if your AdTech/MarTech company or agency is in need of more development resources, do yourself a favor and make sure that three-letter acronyms aren’t foreign to them.
Is your AdTech/MarTech company or agency experiencing similar problems? Do you lack the experience and skilled resources needed to push your technology forward? Feel free to contact us and have a chat about the technical challenges you are facing. Clearcode might be able to help.
About Clearcode
Clearcode is a full-service AdTech and MarTech development company. We partner with vendors and agencies to design, build, and maintain high-performance advertising and marketing technology.
Since 2009, we’ve built all kinds of technology for companies of all sizes, from demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs) to data- and customer-management platforms (DMPs and CDPs), and developed custom solutions (reporting and campaign management dashboards) by integrating existing software with other AdTech and MarTech platforms.
