Merging adtech and martech is a hot topic at Advertising Week New York 2018 as brands hope to eliminate silos and find a way to streamline the process. During a panel called “Adtech Meets Martech,” Nielsen, Microsoft and Outfront Media shared their hopes and concerns for an industry with plenty of data but not enough intercommunication.

CX begins at the first step of the customer journey, which is gained through adtech. Martech, on the other hand, covers retention through analytics and communication tools. The panel cited a statistic in which marketers use an average of 13 different systems to communicate with customers. Needless to say, marketers are looking for a way to consolidate data for better results.

The biggest hurdle marketers face in this task is siloed information, according to the Neilsen’s EVP Damian Garbaccio.

“We’re trying to say that it isn’t one or the other anymore,” said Garbaccio. “The silo is still an after effect of education in the organizations that use them—not coming together to use them properly. That takes time, but I do believe that’s coming together faster than it did say, two or three years ago.”

Chandra Stevens, Microsoft’s global director of cross-industry marketing solutions, added that silos occur because of a fear associated with the cost of bringing adtech and martech together. Doing so would solve a lot of personalization problems, however. Stevens added that with around 6,800 niche marketing technologies out there, her priority becomes scaling everything down to finding the right vendors for the right solutions. More companies, she noticed, are putting the consumer at the center of these efforts.

If adtech and martech do come together in harmony, the panelists imagined, marketers will be able to better understand customers on every step of the journey.

“A lot of folks in the media world have to bring their technologies up to par with where Google, Facebook and others are so we can start to compare media across a level playing field,” said Andy Sriubas, chief commercial officer of Outfront Media. “Then toolsets can be made that allow us to see across all those different value chains.”

As brand giants like Procter and Gamble demand more transparency, the need for adtech and martech convergence will become more urgent. If these two elements are brought together, everyone benefits, said Garbaccio. Today’s brands want to be more informed and are taking more services in-house to gain more control.

“Ultimately,” he said, “[bringing adtech and martech together] will lead to relevant advertising.”

It all comes down to customer experience and curating that will become easier when marketers are able to streamline their data resources.

“When the data sets allow us to bring the customer journey and the customer’s physical location journey, I think we’ll be able to bring a much bigger value chain down to a certain number of players and consolidation will help,” said Sriubas.