By Hussein Dajani, general manager – digital marketing, AMI region (Africa, Middle East, and India), Nissan Motor Corporation

So many new lingos out there, but do people really care? People don’t consume media in silo; they’re interacting with brands across multiple touch points and platforms, each on their own path to purchase. They don’t know OR care about the differences between the various advertising and marketing technologies, and they expect to be exposed to a unified brand message everywhere.

Digital has raised the bar for the type of experiences consumers expect from brands. This is forcing us (marketers) to up our game and in doing so, we have to use adtech and martech to attract, engage and acquire customers.

We’ve had it drilled into our heads that ad tech is for media buys and martech for personalized content; that ad tech is for paid media and martech for owned. But, is that truly the case?

The tools we use to manage ads on social media networks aren’t considered adtech. Influencer marketing isn’t considered adtech. And the DMPs we’ve long considered adtech tools are now being used to personalize owned media.

So, is convergence inevitable? Are we finally witnessing a new age in ad-mar-tech, where the lines will become so blurred that they will merge into one discipline?

Convergence is a compelling future state, but it’s not as easy as slamming all the data into a database and coding the functionality into a single interface. For it to be realized, much reorganization is required from brands and their agencies; workflows and processes to be re-engineered; and technology and data (a lot of data) to be reassessed among other things.