Making Sense of Martech – Details, episodes & analysis

From third-party to first-party: Building a better data foundation

What do you think of when I say “tech start-up?” Those words probably conjure up thoughts of a small team working out of the founder’s garage somewhere in Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, or Cupertino. The reason that image springs to mind is because that is how a bunch of the biggest and most influential tech companies started out over the years. But who started this trend?

Well, it’s not a plucky start-up anymore, but the answer is Hewlett Packard. Way back in 1939, Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded HP in a one-car garage at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, which is now adorned with a plaque reading: The Birthplace of Silicon Valley. A lot has changed since then: Far from their fledgling days when they produced audio oscillators (which Disney used to test the sound equipment for the movie ‘Fantasia’!), HP is now a multinational IT mainstay.

The original HP split into two companies in 2015: Hewlett Packard Enterprise for enterprise products and services, and HP Inc for its personal computer and printer business. The split between its B2B and B2C customers was reflected in its data architecture. Like many legacy businesses, HP found itself in a situation where it had separate platforms and data stores for commercial and consumer data managed by a plethora of different stakeholders, leading to a severely siloed data landscape.

Over the last few years, HP has overcome these challenges by bringing together its fractured data landscape into a modern, composable data architecture befitting its history as the origin of the Silicon Valley mythology. To understand how HP went about this transformation, The Martech Weekly sat down with Kumar Ram, Global Head of Marketing Data Sciences, and Luis Alonzo, Head of Customer Data Strategy and Engineering. 

Kumar and Luis’s responses have been edited for clarity and congruency.

Welcome to our very first TMW case study! Kicking off this series, we’re featuring Rappi, the Latin American super-app that connects consumers with merchants that sell a wide variety of products, and drivers that can bring those products to their doorstep. The three-sided business is not only a logistical challenge, but also a Martech challenge.

Rappi’s array of marketing campaigns and offers, driven by a sophisticated deep-linking strategy, is crucial to its success. It did, however, lead to the need for an impossibly large amount of QA to ensure the successful delivery of customer experience workflows, ensuring that would-be customers don’t fall off their buying journey at any point, from clicking on an ad through to landing in the app and making a purchase.

Leading the Martech and Adtech practice at Rappi is Satya Ramachandran, who brings over 12 years of Martech experience to the table, having previously worked as a data engineer building distributed databases. 

In this case study, we’ll walk through how Satya not only scaled the Martech QA process using computer vision and robots, but turned QA into a profit-driving initiative with champions throughout the business, rather than just a cost center.

Satya’s responses have been edited for clarity and congruency.

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A conversation with Eric Seufert.

In this episode, I’m joined by Eric Seufert to talk about his thesis-slash-catch phrase “everything is an ad network.” Eric is a successful entrepreneur, investor and media founder who is focused on the intersection of mobile apps and Adtech.

Eric worked a number of Adtech roles in Europe which led him to founding and exiting analytics platform for mobile developers Agamemnon. He is now investing in companies in the Adtech space with Heracles Capital and runs the deeply respected and always interesting Mobile Dev Memo.

In this episode, we talk about Adtech branching out into all kinds of new commerce, retail, and platform media channels, Europe’s role in the development of mobile apps and gaming, what will happen to the web if Eric’s catchphrase “everything is an ad network” becomes a reality, privacy and the threat of walled gardens, whether or not programmatic has a future, media power laws, the 1% of ad networks and many other topics…

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• You can find Eric on LinkedIn.

A conversation with Gareth Noonan.

In this episode we’re joined by a leader in the world of B2B adtech and martech, someone whose expertise has truly left an indelible mark, Gareth Noonan.

Gareth Noonan is an accomplished General Manager at Demandbase, recognized for spearheading international cross-functional teams in Sales, CX, and Operations. With a track record of steering business units to generate over $150M in revenue, Gareth's proficiency extends to Programmatic Strategy, Operations, Sales, Business Development, and Product management. He's an expert in mobile app and desktop video, OTT, native, and display advertising across all screens.

Gareth has held prominent positions at leading industry players. He served as the General Manager for Americas at Smaato, driving impactful strategies in the Adtech landscape. As the SVP of Operations at AdFormics, Gareth contributed to their success for nearly three years, showcasing his strategic prowess. Currently, Gareth is the GM of Advertising at Demandbase.

In this episode, we discuss the journey of building Demandbase's demand-side platform and their pivotal shifts in Adtech thinking, the challenge of adapting B2C-centric Adtech to the intricate B2B landscape, the significance of a B2B-specific DSP for Account-Based Marketing strategies, the concept of the "dark funnel" in marketing and its impact on B2B campaigns and lastly, we explore the rise of Connected TV in the B2B realm.

• Go here for ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠show notes, links, and resources.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
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• You can find Gareth on LinkedIn.

In this episode, we’re joined by Bobby Tichy and Michael Burton, co-founders at Stitch. Both Bobby and Michael are well-respected within the martech industry, bringing a unique perspective to customer engagement, CX, tech stacks, and the martech industry overall.

Bobby Tichy is a veteran of two of the most well-respected brands in martech, Marketo and Salesforce, where he led and supported implementations for many big brands. After his time with those two companies, Bobby moved onto Lev, a Salesforce consultancy, before the company was acquired in 2022 by Cognizant. At that point, Bobby teamed up with Michael to co-found Stitch, a martech consultancy that focuses on Braze and MarTech architecture. Now in his role as Chief Solutions Officer, Bobby leads the company’s solutions team, and loves to talk about martech architecture, customer engagement platforms, the customer journey, and more.

Michael Burton is also a veteran of Salesforce who has worked at several other companies, including ExactTarget, which went on to be acquired by Salesforce. After leaving Salesforce, he also made his way over to Lev, where he rose up the ranks from Senior Director to SVP to CEO, the position he held when the company was acquired. Now serving as the CEO of Stitch, Michael is continuing to focus on building and scaling professional services for marketing technology. His areas of expertise include meaningful metrics, customer engagement, CX, and the martech industry as a whole.

In this conversation, we dive into going through the process of a company acquisition, implementing the right martech stack, CX strategy, Stitch’s partnership with Braze, and a look to the future of martech.

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• You can find Bobby on LinkedIn and Michael as well on LinkedIn

In this episode we have Michaela Aguilar. Michaela is the head of business partnerships and ecosystems at Acoustic, a customer engagement platform company. Most recently Michaela has been leading a new Martech course with ADMA here in Australia called the Marketing Technology Certificate. Michaela also works as a Mentor at not for profit group Women in Data, and has a long and storied career in customer experience optimisation and analytics.

In this episode, we talk about the connection between education and Martech utilization, solving some of the education problems in the Martech industry in Australia, and how marketers should be thinking about and buying tech.

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• You can find Michaela on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

A conversation with Josh Manion.

In this episode we have Josh Manion joining us. Josh is the CEO of Vault JS, and previously worked as the founder of Ensighten, and the CEO Stratigent, both successful companies in the analytics, Adtech and data management space. Vault JS offers an advanced AI solution that continually scans data collection technologies in brands and alerts teams to suspicious activity, data leaks or accidental sharing with third parties. something they call “data assurance”.

In this episode we talk aboutVaultJS’ approach to building privacy-positive tech in the Martech and Adtech space, what data assurance is, data leakage horror stories, and the current state of data monitoring in the Martech industry.

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• You can find Josh on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

A conversation with Adam Furness.

In this episode I have Adam Furness joining me. Adam is the Asia Pacific managing director for Impact.com, a platform for managing partnerships, content collaborations, and affiliate marketing. Impact is one of the few platforms solely focused on Partnership Automation Technology, by helping businesses grow through creating better media buying decisions and managing partner lifecycles.

Adam is also the co-chair of UnLtd, a social purpose organization connecting the media, marketing, and creative industries with charities and helping children and young people at risk.

In this episode, we talk about the return of the affiliate, and how privacy pressures on the digital marketing industry are bringing about a renewed interest in partnerships, affiliate marketing, and new ways to scale up content marketing efforts with influencers, bloggers, content creators, and publishers.

• Go here for ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠show notes, links, and resources.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
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• You can find Adam on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

A conversation with Alexandra Theriault.

In this episode, we have Alexandra Theriault, the chief growth officer at Adtech company Lotame. Alexandra has been working with Lotame for more than 15 years, playing several key roles in the company as it has grown into an international Adtech player.

Lotame plays a key role in advertising and increasingly in the Martech industry through its widely used cookieless Panorama ID , data marketplace and recently announced Spherical platform, a CDP accelerator. Complementary to the CDP and accelerating that into Adtech use cases.

In this episode, we talk about why Lotame has decided to step into the Martech world with the Spherical platform, the role of first-party data in a post third-party-cookie world, how identity is changing in Adtech and if we’ll start to see a divergence or paid and owned focused CDPs.

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• You can find Alex on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

A conversation with Rajan Kumar.

In this episode, we have Rajan Kumar, CEO and cofounder of The Lumery. He’s an unusual guest because not too long ago Raj was my boss! It’s a pleasure to have Raj on to talk about their latest research entitled Stacks on Stacks on Stacks - The Voices of Martech. Raj has pioneered a unique approach to MarTech consulting, combining the optimization of tech stacks with the development of clients’ internal capabilities, processes, and data-driven cultures, ensuring lasting outcomes can be achieved. Rajan is passionate about building high-performance teams through supportive culture and loves collaborating with forward thinkers.

In this episode we talk about the “Ferrari in the garage” problem in Martech, how leaders in enterprise brands thinking about investing into Martech, coordination problems in Martech, the path to progress, and the influence of personal ambition when buying and using Martech.

Go here for ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠show notes, links, and resources.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow Juan Mendoza on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Listen on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Apple⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Google⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠everywhere else.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can find Rajan on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.