“Data-driven creativity will become the future.”
-Sir Martin Sorrell
For a DMEXCO veteran like me, the event looked smaller compared to previous years; some big names were missing, fewer exhibitors and less attendees. But when speaking with colleagues attending it for the first time I was reminded what DMEXCO is: a very big event for an industry that sometimes feels like a small world. It’s an opportunity to speak about fascinating digital trends, breakthrough innovations coming from any corner of the “old Continent” plus newcomers, like VidMob in Europe.
The brands we spoke to know they have an enormous opportunity to adapt and show their agility. They want to understand how to spend smarter and better understand the Intelligent Creative movement. We all know now optimizing the media buy is not enough, brands need to look at their creative assets and use smart data to improve performance.
Our very own VP EMEA, Anthony Lamy, was on stage for a fireside chat with Shaun Lynch from Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) and attendees were able to learn of AB’s inBev Intelligent Creative journey: what it is and isn’t (tv campaigns), how critical it is to optimize digital campaigns and how everything they tried to do for 6 months in-house manually VidMob was actually able to automate. I wasn’t surprised to see brands coming to our booth after the session to have a conversation usually starting with something like,“‘We know we can do better, we just don’t know how.”
Finally, DMEXCO offered an incredible opportunity to (re)connect in-person with industry peers from across Europe. It worked as a great reminder, if needed, of why most of us work in the ad tech world – the pace of innovation, the challenges ahead, creativity at its core and above all is the people, old and new, that makes the long tiring two days fun, rewarding and inspiring.