Digital technologies have had a significant impact on the advertising industry, changing how consumers behave and how marketers reach out to potential customers across every conceivable platform. Indeed, according to research, digital advertising spending hit $521.02 billion in 2021 and by 2026 is expected to reach nearly $900 billion.
In response to these demands, AdTech innovation has exploded as advertising has moved from traditional to online channels. As the sector continues to innovate at pace, new platforms and services are being developed by both digital agencies and AdTech start-ups to connect brands, publishers, marketers and consumers.
However, in today’s digital environment, managing large and complicated campaigns creates an increasingly diverse range of IT issues. As a result, developing the correct IT infrastructure that addresses both performance and financial criteria has become vital to success, whether it’s an agency building eCommerce websites for customers or an AdTech firm running programmatic ad inventory. Across every digital use case, unexpected outages, lost revenue, and dissatisfied customers can all result from any deficiencies in technology strategy, implementation or management.
It’s unsurprising, therefore, that AdTech firms have become increasingly reliant on infrastructure partners to deliver an IT solution that is properly suited for their clients’ demands – and do so while reducing any potential risks.
However, with so many infrastructure options available, how can AdTech companies or other digital agencies be confident they’re focusing on the correct priorities? There are some key considerations to ensure mission critical IT services remain fit for purpose in the highly competitive online advertising industry.
- Getting the Most Out of Infrastructure Investment
Controlling IT expenditure is a constant struggle for many digital businesses, especially when faced with tight budgets and competing priorities. In order to deliver ad campaigns that meet client expectations and generate revenue, they must strike a delicate balance between infrastructure investment and performance.
The first question marketers and advertisers should address when deciding on a hosting strategy is, “How can we save money on our infrastructure and maintain performance?”
There’s no doubt that choosing the proper consultative infrastructure partner can make all the difference in this situation. Within the restrictions of a budget, the correct hosting company can lay out several solutions that correspond with each organisation’s unique aims. In the process, technology spending can be optimised so IT teams can balance operational priorities against the need to innovate.
- Balancing in-house resources with external partnerships
While it’s something of a cliche to say that a good technology partner can become a de facto member of their customer’s IT team, it does relate to what many organisations look for. For instance, most agencies do not want to be concerned with the day-to-day maintenance of their hosting solution or the need to expand their storage. Instead, they want to know that the websites, apps and campaigns they’re responsible for work smoothly and without interruption for their clients.
By collaborating closely with internal teams and building a solution that aligns infrastructure components with business needs – at the lowest possible cost – the proper technology partner can help reduce this strain.
For instance, pursuing a hybrid approach can enable predictable workloads and bandwidth-hungry systems to be relocated to bare metal dedicated servers, while other workloads requiring specialised tools and rapid scaling are hosted on a public or private cloud. In this type of scenario, monthly infrastructure costs can be made much more predictable, with agencies able to take advantage of the various technologies offered across today’s cloud platforms.
- Asking the right questions
When selecting an infrastructure provider, agencies need a dependable, knowledgeable, and adaptable partner who will act as a trusted technology advisor as well as a hosting firm. IT infrastructure design varies greatly by industry, which is why it’s critical to pick a provider with extensive experience and a proven track record in the digital advertising field.
Furthermore, agencies should ask potential infrastructure partners some searching questions, including:
- Can they customise solutions to meet their unique and frequently changing requirements?
- For hybrid or multi-cloud requirements, can they provide direct access to other chosen infrastructure providers?
- Can they facilitate future business growth by implementing or scaling during a timeframe that corresponds to expansion requirements?
- Are they able to keep customer data safe with a variety of software and hardware-based tools, and also offer round-the-clock physical security and assistance?
In today’s competitive advertising market, it’s difficult to envision running a successful advertising firm without a solid technology foundation, but getting good answers to these key points will help overcome the hurdles that many agencies face when constructing their IT infrastructure. Given that technology and IT management is now crucial to how agencies get things done, a well-designed solution relieves developers and marketers of technical responsibilities, allowing them to focus on their clients and digital campaigns.
