OPINION: Digital silos – the old problems emerge

There is a disturbing reality emerging in digital media that sees the industry increasingly alienating marketers because of complexity and silo structures. Our industry is in danger of repeating the mistakes of the “traditional media industry”, where clients found themselves having to manage multiple agency relationships in order to cover their investments.

As digital marketing investments across APAC head closer to the magic $25 billion mark, a myriad of successful niche communications businesses have emerged. However, managing multiple-agency relationships is becoming a barrier to entry for many clients, who tend to limit their digital exposure due to confusion in this space with no simplified approach or path to follow.

This is no more apparent than in the accelerating social environment. Social media is currently front and centre in terms of world attention. The massive hype around the Facebook IPO and subsequent fall of the share price, as well as General Motors’ decision to pull out of Facebook, have been two huge stories. In media terms, we are seeing a reaction by marketers that there is a serious disconnect between strategic brand decisions, creative delivery, data suppliers and optimsation tools used to tune social-media ROI.

Both agencies and advertisers are struggling to break this explosive environment into bite-sized chunks, but as we move further into technology and data-driven solutions, vertical products and silos will continue to escalate across the digital communications industry. This is not good news for clients, who are already struggling to manage existing resources.  

Many social digital-communications businesses insist that they ‘own’ their area of expertise, but from a client's perspective this insistence is having negative effects on high-quality delivery and basic ROI of digital work. The 'ownership' issues create confusion for many clients and a tendency for them to bring the functions back in-house, potentially limiting quality, efficiencies and the ability to manage digital with greater ease.

We are getting too bogged down in ‘just media’. Delivering a consumer experience should always be our principal focus, therefore creating an offering that can deliver this seamless process is essential to maximizing advertiser efficiencies.

In social media, too many businesses lose sight of the key objectives and risk strangling the speed and flexibility at which the market can grow.