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CMOs to increase budget spend on automated tech predicts Next 15 CEO Tim Dyson

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By Stephen Lepitak, -

August 11, 2014 | 3 min read

Chief marketing officers will spend more on automated technology rather than habitually turning to agencies for communication solutions in the coming years, Next 15 chief executive, Tim Dyson has predicted, as marketers realise that such resource is available to them and the technology comes of age.

Speaking to The Drum following the merger of his group agencies Bite and Text100 in the Asia Pacific region, Dyson explained that the group had seen more clients turn to emerging technologies as a solution to a marketing problem rather than take a ‘traditional’ campaign approach.

He said: “They are looking to find out whether there is a piece of technology which could solve the problem to reach a particular community with a particular message. Do they need to use an agency or could they use a piece of technology for that?

"We can confidently predict that within the next five years CMOs will be spending a proportion of their budget on technology that does just that, be it bots or technology like Narrative Science where they are automating content through specific channels. Literally taking big data, turning it into content and a marketing person doesn’t even put their finger on it.”

He claimed that as a result of language generation tools like Narrative Science, which boasts technology which is able to generate coherent sentences based on data analysis, it was "very likely that we are going to see a lot of that,” he stated.

As a result of this insight, Bite will alter its growth strategy, no longer expanding around the world, but investing instead in automated technology, while also building capability within the agency to offer such solutions to clients.

“Things like this are now possible, whereas a year ago they weren’t, or they were so infantile that it was hard to persuade a client to use it.”

Despite his prediction, Dyson did not believe that this would mean the death of communications agency as a result of machines overtaking man: “You are going to see a real redrawing of the boundaries for budgets as a result of the ability to take structured data and to turn it into content existing.”

Last week, Dyson also revealed that Next 15’s management expected revenue to exceed £100m for the year end this month.

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