Ad Pays 7: Pippa Glucklich – What does the future hold?

In the recent Ad Pays 7 report from the industry’s think tank Credos on UK advertising’s digital revolution, a series of leading figures from across UK advertising were asked the question: As the digitalisation of advertising continues to develop what is the most important challenge and the most important opportunity for your business?

In the fifth of of a series of extracts from the leaders’ answers to the question we are featuring the response of Pippa Glucklich, CEO, Amplifi UK.

Pippa Glucklich, CEO, Amplifi UK

“Simplifying the complex is a phrase often heard in our sector. Yet somehow, whether through mass commoditisation of inventory, multiple routes to market, jargon or tech stacks, we’ve turned what ought to be quite a simple process of delivering communications messages to interested parties into a bit of a mess.

What digitalisation has brought, even though it promised to reduce complexity, is uncertainty, lack of relevancy, distrust, an explosion of messages and multiple acronyms. Yet it’s also democratised media in an unprecedented way. Platforms such as Facebook and Google are the partner of choice for a new breed of D2C brands and the trend towards in-housing for many well-established brands is well documented. Increasingly, agencies must think about their relevance for newly established businesses and the role we play in this new world order. This is a challenge for agencies but one which most welcome as one of our biggest opportunities – and let’s face it, our industry is adept at reinvention.

Understanding people has always been the core of what we do. If media is being more democratised, then those who offer the most insightful and accurate method of connecting brands with audiences in a meaningful way will always add value. And the opportunity for brands, marketers and their agencies to do this is by connecting with real people at personal level – not via the historical methods of models, proxies and, let’s face it, a lot of guesswork. Which is why Dentsu Aegis Network invested in Merkle, a leading global data-driven and technology enabled business. Through their M1 platform, we now have an unparalleled view of people at an individual ID level, and importantly audiences that we can activate against in programmatic and addressable media, so it’s 100% accountable. It takes personalisation to another level, delivering unique, relevant and tailored customer experiences in real time – and that really is a game changer.”