Marketing professionals use various tools and technologies for advertising and marketing. These technologies help in enhancing our efficiency, improving the speed and accuracy of our campaigns. The tools help in strengthening sales, marketing, and advertising operations, their integration, execution, optimization, and management of processes and different data sources.
Some of these tools are advertising technologies or AdTech, and some are marketing technologies or MarTech. There are several similarities and differences between AdTech and MarTech. We’ve segregated these two based on their significant differences and how they can help marketers maximize data-driven personalization.
Understanding MarTech and AdTech
What is MarTech?
Marketing technology or MarTech refers to the broad category of technologies used in planning strategies and executing digital marketing campaigns. These technologies can provide assistance in demand and lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and lead routing to conversion.
John Koetsier, the VP of Singular, has defined MarTech tools as “Every piece of technology a marketer uses to succeed in a possible customer.” MarTech covers a wide range of tools and technologies, including:
- Email marketing software
- Marketing automation platforms
- Social media management software
- Content marketing platforms
- Analytics
- Customer data management platforms
A “MarTech stack” implies the assortment of various marketing technologies integrated well with every platform in the stack and is deployed to meet marketing and sales goals. The right type of MarTech stack is a set of integrated technologies chosen specifically to boost marketing and sales operations.
What is AdTech?
AdTech is the advertising technology that refers to the set of technologies designed to execute digital advertising campaigns. These advertising tools range from backend tools to the frontline execution tools that help advertisers build, implement, and manage ads better for targeted audiences. The wide range of AdTech tools include:
- Advertising exchanges/networks/servers
- Data management platforms
- Programmatic advertising tools
- Tag management systems
- Demand-side platforms
What Are the Differences Between MarTech and AdTech?
While an AdTech tool enables targeting anonymous traffic, a MarTech stack effectively targets known customers. In addition to this prominent difference, there are numerous ways Adtech and MarTeh stacks differ. The critical differences have been categorized between these two by their functions, features, use, and benefits below:
- Coverage
An AdTech stack includes demand generation-side software, data management platforms, advertising networks, and ad exchanges. Publishers use these platforms profusely to create digital advertising spaces.
Marketing technology stacks support different aspects of marketing campaigns such as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, marketing automation tools, sales automation tools, event management tools, creative design tools, content marketing tools, SEO tools, and many others.
- Role
An advertising technology refers to the technology that helps create brand awareness and spreads the word for your products, services, and offerings in the marketplace. In addition to spreading awareness, these tools also help generate demand about the brand and its offerings.
A marketing technology tool or stack of marketing technology tools carry out various activities. MarTech tools come in handy for a broader range of marketing activities such as planning strategies, product pricing, product distribution, multi-channel marketing, planning sales strategy, customer service, market research, customer segmentation, and community engagements other activities that impact in extending the customer outreach.
- Channel
In AdTech, the channels that advertisers use to reach potential audiences are third-party paid media. In MarTech, channels for increasing customer and prospects outreach are owned media to execute data-driven personalization activities.
- Customer Insights
Understanding your customers and prospects is critical. Begin with analyzing customer data collected from analytics platforms. An AdTech tool collects customer data by using cookies from third-party sources, and then, this data is used to build ad campaigns.
A MarTech platform includes marketing automation, CRM tools, and similar other platforms to collect lead data through various journeys of the customer. Based on this data, MarTech tools enable segmentation of customers into multiple groups to improve targeting and message delivery.
- Communication
While AdTech tools only give limited and one-way communications between customers and advertisers, MarTech tools enable marketers to perform two-way communications between them and their potential customers.
- Customer Data
Every customer leaves digital footprints, in several stages of their journey, through online interactions. That’s why marketers use databases to trace customers’ behavior and activities across different channels like company websites, email campaigns, newsletters, social media posts, search queries, ad responses, and others. Despite the many importance of databases, AdTech tools come short to assist users in maintaining a database of customers’ digital footprints.
That’s why MarTech tools are considered more fashionable marketers. They present marketers with plentiful options in data collection and management tools that generate extensive insights on customers, including demography, employment, behavioral, purchase history, and others.
- Retargeting
When customers add any product or service to their cart and don’t complete the acquisition process, they’re targeted with product-related advertisements. This process of targeting an equivalent customer is retargeting. Customer targeting activities are most typical in advertising, and AdTech tools support retargeting.
But within the marketing industry, marketers adopt various methodologies of retargeting their prospects and customers. They run omnichannel marketing campaigns through diverse channels like social media ads, abandoned handcart marketing campaigns, and related product or service suggestions by leveraging machine learning technologies.
- Revenue
AdTech tools are usually significant in media activities. These tools generate revenue supporting the number of advertising campaigns and what clients have developed. Users of AdTech tools buy AdTech supporting the performance of the client’s revenue generation and advertising volume.
MarTech tools typically work on SaaS or MaaS business models. Marketers or business owners pay subscription fees for MarTech tools. The subscription models vary supported user profiles, capabilities, and course of your time. Subscription fees of MarTech platforms get automatically renewed every year. Customers and businesses are charged with existing payment methods.
In addition to those differences, MarTech and AdTech tools differ in other areas, like adaptability.
MarTech suites are more adaptable than AdTech tools to ongoing customer behavior changes, market trends, and operation processes. An AdTech tool isn’t flexible towards such changes. Since advertising campaigns are transactional, the critical method of AdTech tools is to extend impressions, reach, and engagement. On the other hand, MarTech tools offer far more beyond just increasing reach and engagement.
MarTech tools are user-oriented, starting from lead generation, lead qualification, lead routing, subscriber reactivation, and conversion through different customer journeys.
Would you like to know more about how AdTech and MarTech tools can enhance your advertising and marketing efforts? You can connect with our MarTech experts by saying “Hello” at info@martechpulse.com, or if you are on social media, DM us via Facebook or LinkedIn.
