1/ I wrote a thing for @AdMonsters yesterday. It occurred to me that #adtech mostly came about during a booming economy. This has likely led to features, pricing, and client expectations geared toward a healthy/growing economy, not a recession economy. https://www.admonsters.com/marketers-urgently-need-three-things-from-ad-tech/

2/ Here are a couple of well-known ad tech names plotted over US yearly GDP growth. Is this all of ad tech? No. Am I calling these specific platforms into question? No. But pick your metric, the environment for a whole decade was "up and to the right." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_expansions_in_the_United_States

3/ Aside from a generally expanding economy and amazing bull market, there were other sources of exuberance: vast sums of VC investment, new and incredibly competitive advertisers (Uber; all the DTCs) spending $2.00 to make $1.00, lots of M&A activity, and so forth.

4/ What should marketers expect from ad tech in an environment where none of those things are true any more? How should ad tech features and platform design change to suit a recession environment?

5/ Fee structures are a big one. From an industry insider perspective, this is already being looked at. Via @Digiday @larakiara http://digiday.com/media/companies-are-in-freeze-mode-coronavirus-crisis-strains-ad-tech-licensing-model/

6/ And the @tkawaja's of the world are wondering what a shitty economy will do to the ad tech ecosystem in terms of investment, M&A, and overall company/ecosystem health. Via @adexchanger @OSchiffey https://www.adexchanger.com/investment/ad-tech-ma-fell-off-a-cliff-in-q1-and-not-just-because-of-covid-19/

7/ There are many awful circumstances outside marketers' and ad tech product managers' control, but marketers probably ought to adjust their expectations of an ad tech platform (to quote @martinsorrell "faster, better, cheaper" seems apropos)...

8/ ...likewise ad tech product managers, partner execs, and sales teams ought to rethink how their product fits into a different and more adverse world. How do you transform your product from "nonessential" to "essential?" http://digiday.com/media/companies-are-in-freeze-mode-coronavirus-crisis-strains-ad-tech-licensing-model/

9/ In fact, even before COVID hit, ad tech was already looking a little shaky. Via @LUMA_partners https://lumapartners.com/content/presentations/luma-digital-brief-027-market-report-q1-2020/

10/ So what ad tech problems do marketers now need to prioritize?

- Did the campaign make actual money? Is there demonstrable ROI?
- Was the ad tech platform expensive to own/use?
- Does the ad tech platform require too many staff?
- Does the platform allow me to pivot quickly?

11/ More problems marketers need to prioritize:

- Will the product cost adapt to volatility in my budget and my business' health?
- Could I replace 2+ products with one product?
- Is the product and its value easy to communicate to my CFO and leadership?

12/ And with respect to measurement and demonstrable ROI, obviously ad tech products were ALREADY in the throes of trying to figure out how to adapt to a "cookieless" environment. The measurability question was already urgent, now perhaps doubly so.

13/ That's all for now. Curious what all the marketers and ad tech product leaders out there think. @aripap @vinny_rinaldi3 @LouPas @Gu881n5 @pbannist @rickbruner @veronicaripson @SimonJHarris @PaulGelb @BJStech @nealmohan @ratko