Forrester Wave: Social ad tech tools are still an ‘immature’ category

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From the AdEspresso website

From the website of ad tech tool AdEspresso, acquired by social management platform Hootsuite in February

Forrester is out this week with a Wave report on a class of marketing tools that it expects won’t last much longer: social ad tech.

The Forrester Wave: Social Advertising Technology, Q3 2017” (fee or client membership required) is the first such report about social ad tech that the research firm has conducted since 2013. Since that time, author Jessica Liu emailed me, the number of players has changed and grown but “the space remains fragmented and characteristic of an emerging technology landscape — despite existing for years.”

She characterized this space as “immature with many startups [and] few vendors managing meaningful social ad budgets,” even though social ad spending overall has grown.

In fact, she predicted, this “won’t exist as its own category for long.” Social media management tools like Hootsuite, omnichannel demand-side platforms like MediaMath and marketing clouds like Adobe, she said, will acquire standalone solutions or replace them with their own homegrown versions.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]


About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.


 

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