On Wednesday night, BostInno hosted its State of Innovation panel on the Future of AdTech, where five local adtech veterans discussed various issues impacting the industry, including the disconnect between data and the creative side, among other things. The moderator of the panel was Ori Stitelman, vice president of data science at Dstillery, and his panelists were Jay Habegger, CEO of ownerIQ; Doug Hurd, Co-Founder of clypd; Bettina Hein, CEO of Pixability; and Baba Shetty, CEO of Invisible Science.
Here are a few takeaways from what they discussed:
• Boston is a great place to start an adtech company because of the talent but there will always be a pull from New York because that's where many of the partners and customers are. "We find this huge gravitational pull in New York," Habegger said. However, this does give Boston companies the advantage over those on the West Coast because of distance.
• "Fixing the dysfunctionality between media, tech and agency is the most fundamental thing," Hein said. She added that there needs to be more of a feedback loop between the data that's being collected and the creative side so that there is greater alignment. "So much gets lost in the game of telephone," she said.
• President Donald Trump's immigration and refugee ban, which is currently placed on hold by an appeals court, would have a detrimental effect on the adtech industry's ability to find the best talent. Hein had the bluntest statement on its potential impact: "It could lead to an implosion of the tech ecosystems."
And here are some ideas that caught the attention of our attendees:
Adtech biggest challenge - "Marketers figuring out how to make sense of data" #BOSSOI @babashetty
— Savannah (@SavannahZhu) February 9, 2017
Love @babashetty's analogy about lack of transparency on the #adtech supply side - "it's like grading your own homework." #BOSSOI pic.twitter.com/9SoSnT6GD8
— Juliana (@attackofthetext) February 9, 2017
Time spent on messy metrics such as viewability inhibit us from spending more time on data to drive results #foodforthought#bossoi
— Allie Sharp (@AllieJade8) February 9, 2017
And a few more photos from the event:
