Targeting: the future of marketing?

Marketing, like many other industries, is undergoing a transformation. As technology is becoming more advanced and big data easier to implement, marketers are able to directly react to the customer's needs.

We spoke to Mike Harris, VP Monetate at EMEA, about what the company is doing and how it's changing the way marketers do business.

TechRadar Pro: Can you describe what Monetate does?

Mike Harris: Monetate is a marketing acceleration software company that believes when the customer wins, the marketer wins.

Business growth is impossible without the ability to connect the teams and technologies that power the customer experience. Monetate does this by connecting two crucial elements that have always been separate—customer knowledge and marketing action—on every screen, in any channel, and at all key phases of the relationship and most important of all, in the moment.

We accelerate marketing in three areas: interaction between the customer and the marketer in the moment, engagement between the customer and the marketer over time and in the beginning of those conversations, allowing the marketer to reach those customers.

On the website, in the moment during the interaction between a marketer and the customer, Monetate allows enterprises to pay attention to everything they know to put the right experience in front of the customer.

The same is true throughout the days/months/years of the relationship. Whether it's email, social or other channels, Monetate allows marketers to get the right message in front of the customer, at the right time, in the right channel to keep the conversation authentic and valuable over time.

Monetate generates billions of dollars of new revenue for businesses, helping them grow 39 percent faster than the industry average. Brands such as Best Buy, National Geographic, and Celebrity Cruises are turning data into action.

TRP: What is Monetate's operating philosophy?

MH: Do the right thing for our customers, employees and the industry.

TRP: How did Monetate begin?

MH: Our CEO, David Brussin founded Monetate with David Bookspan in 2008 to help make it easier for marketers fulfill the long-held promise of using Big Data to get the right experience in front of the right customer at the right time.

TRP: Where is Monetate based?

MH: Monetate is headquartered in West Conshohocken, PA, and the majority of staff are based in this location. In June 2012, Monetate opened its London office to service the entire EMEA region, and expanded that office further in 2013 in an effort to keep pace with the strong demand for our services in those areas.

Finally, several Monetate team members are strategically located in major markets across the US, such as New York, Los Angeles and more.

TRP: How many people are employed by Monetate?

MH: Monetate currently employs more than 200 people.

TRP: What does the future of the advertising industry hold?

MH: Our premise is that marketing fundamentally needs to be changed working back from the consumer as opposed to working to them. I think we're going to see advertising that is more meaningful and less disruptive to the individual consumer.

To get there, though, we as marketers need to rethink the customer experience: When we're pushing a message, what happens when someone sees a display ad on a major website? An ad on television?

And we need to do this from the customer's perspective: what value is that individual getting from our ad? How is it integrated into their day-to-day media consumption? When and where are they experiencing the ad?

I think we're starting to see some of this. We recently published a research paper on real-time marketing and, in it, we highlighted some ways this is happening on digital billboards and within apps.