LAS VEGAS—Having just acquired digital platform marketing specialist Adaptly, Accenture Interactive Operations has added a key asset as it builds out its global “experience activation centers” for clients. “It was completely in our wheelhouse, in our sweet spot, and it’s going to allow us to scale our multi touchpoint activation credentials very, very quickly,” says Accenture Interactive Operations Global President Nikki Mendonca.
Founded in 2010, Adaptly partners with some of the leading digital platforms, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Instagram and Snapchat, for a client roster that includes Chico’s, Mazda, Prudential and Sprint.
“What attracted Accenture Interactive Operations was the fact that they really are leaders in terms of the whole platformization of marketing,” Mendonca explains in this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2019. “They really know how to leverage platforms properly to be able to give a step change in business outcomes.”
Adaptly will significantly bolster the capabilities of Accenture Interactive Programmatic Services, whose core offerings are helping marketers in-house programmatic media; media strategy, planning and activation; and adtech implementation and support.
“We’re very much starting with the world of programmatic delivery because we do firmly believe that all media will be programmatically delivered” as early as 2025, inclusive of TV, Mendonca says. “That’s really where our lens is so we’re starting first with programmatic activation and then we’ll scale that through to myriad number of touchpoints including TV, outdoor, radio, et cetera.”
The acquisition of Adaptly comes as Accenture is creating “experience activation centers” for clients “everywhere from Warsaw to Sao Paolo. What we’re finding is our clients really want us to have a very integrated offering across all paid, owned and earned channels and touchpoints, and that’s really what we’re focused on.”
In all, Accenture has “a whole scaled operation” of 16,000 people across the globe “developing new marketing operating models for clients and new solutions to their growth challenges.”
Because content lies at the heart of marketing experience activation, “We very much are building our product and service offering around a data-driven, tech-enabled content powered way of going to market, which is exactly what are clients are asking for.” Even when building new marketing models, “building a new content operating model is at the heart of that solution,” says Mendonca.
What should be a constant is that any form of brand communication “is actually more engaging and enhances the customer experience,” she adds, “to make sure that advertising is not a tax and it’s not an annoyance for the consumer because ad blocking is only going one way.”
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019. The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal. For more coverage, please visit this page.
