Marketing Technology is Marching Forward
Smart Technology Marketing (STM) is a phrase you need to know for the future. A media economist, PQ Media, released its first benchmark on this area and reported that STM was the fastest-growing marketing segment in 2018. 
We can fall into the crowd that views the coming technology revolution in marketing as a threat, or, as Lawrence Crosby and Chris Langdon put it in an American Marketing Association piece: “What emerges are complex adaptive systems that pose an existential threat to marketing if the field cannot define its role.”
It seems to fit our nation today; marketing tech is either good or bad. Even though marketing technology offers an existential threat and is often challenging, to true marketers — people with a “results” orientation — technology fixes many of the problems with modern marketing. For example, AI-powered platforms will take the fake placement and fake views out of programmatic-based advertising. AI will allow more efficiency and, above all else, more accuracy in the digital media buy. The predictive analysis will also allow for better messaging placement to the right targets and at the right time.
Marketing tech is bleeding into all things, and it is coming fast — from Voice Assistants to Virtual Reality, from Artificial Intelligence to Augmented Reality. These areas are expect to grow at more than 100% for the next two years. Today, smart technology accounts for less than 1% of marketer expenditures, but PQ Media expects the investment to top $7 billion in 2023.
Smart technology marketing is marching forward. Are you going to stand on the parade route and salute, or join the band? To end this on an eerie note, and paraphrasing the Borg, resistance seems futile.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
