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Media & Entertainment > Adtech & Martech Practice

Adtech & Martech Practice

Umbrex connects companies in adtech & martech to independent consultants with deep experience in the industry.

Over 90% of our Adtech & Martech Practice consultants are alums of McKinsey, Bain, or BCG.

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Find a consultant in our Adtech & Martech Practice

Prefer email? Write to [email protected]

Client Segments Umbrex Serves

  • Programmatic Buying & Selling Platforms: Independent DSPs, SSPs, ad servers, and exchanges scaling CTV/mobile/display, privacy-safe identity, SPO, measurement, and global partnerships; excluding media owners.
  • Data, Identity & Measurement Providers: Identity graphs, data marketplaces, clean rooms, consent/CRM onboarding, MMM/MTA, fraud/brand safety, and attention metrics enabling privacy-first targeting and attribution.
  • Marketing Clouds & Customer Engagement Platforms: Enterprise martech stacks—CDP, email/SMS, personalization, journey orchestration, loyalty, analytics—driving omnichannel growth and first-party data strategy for brands and retailers.
  • Creative & Commerce Media Tech: CMP/DAM, dynamic creative optimization, shoppable and retail media ad units, product feeds, and creative automation improving ROAS and speed-to-market.
  • Agencies & Performance Marketing Networks: Media and performance agencies, affiliate networks, and influencer platforms professionalizing pricing, data partnerships, measurement, and operating models; excluding talent representation or media ownership.

Selected Capabilities of our Adtech & Martech Practice

Strategy & Corporate Development

  • Corporate Strategy And Value Pool Prioritization: Define adtech and martech growth strategy across CTV, retail media, clean rooms, and identity; size TAM and profit pools; prioritize where to play and how to win.
  • Build‑Buy‑Partner And Market Entry Strategy: Evaluate build versus acquisition versus partnerships, JVs, and reseller models; sequence go‑to‑market by region and segment; accelerate entry into priority adjacencies.
  • M&A Thesis, Screening, And Diligence: Develop inorganic theses; screen DSPs, SSPs, CDPs, identity graphs, and measurement assets; model synergies; run commercial and technology diligence; blueprint integration or carve‑out plans.
  • Platform Monetization And Pricing Strategy: Design SaaS tiers, usage‑based pricing, data licensing, and take‑rate models; optimize rev‑share and rebates; improve unit economics, ACV, and margin expansion.
  • Strategic Partnerships And Ecosystem Development: Architect alliances with cloud hyperscalers, retailers, publishers, and data providers; structure co‑sell, marketplace listings, and APIs; expand distribution, deal flow, and pipeline velocity.

Operations

  • Client Onboarding And Implementation Factory: Standardize scoping, solution design, integration runbooks, software development kits, server‑to‑server, and APIs; streamline data mapping and QA; cut time‑to‑live, rework, and escalations.
  • Partner Certification And Marketplace Integration Operations: Operate certification for buy‑side, sell‑side, customer data, attribution, clean room, and identity partners; manage checklists and sandbox testing; accelerate integrations and reduce support load.
  • Support, Service Levels, And Incident Management Operations: Stand up 24/7 support tiers, Service Level Agreements, on‑call, runbooks, postmortems, and status communications; reduce mean time to resolution, backlog, and churn risk.
  • Data Ingestion And Pipeline Operations: Run data onboarding, schema validation, deduplication, backfills, anomaly alerts, and freshness checks; meet daily Service Level Agreements; improve reporting accuracy and attribution trust.
  • Cloud Cost Management And Cost-To-Serve Optimization: Implement cost allocation, tagging, rightsizing, autoscaling policies, and storage lifecycle; track unit costs per impression or event; reduce cloud spend and improve gross margin.

Procurement & Strategic Sourcing

  • Cloud And SaaS Sourcing And Commitments Optimization: Optimize hyperscaler enterprise agreements, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, Marketplace private offers, and SaaS renewals; consolidate vendors; lower unit cost and cost-to-serve, improve gross margin.
  • Data Licensing And Measurement Asset Sourcing: Source third‑party datasets, identity graphs, panels, and fraud signals; run competitive bids; negotiate usage tiers and minimums; reduce spend, overages, and duplicative contracts.
  • Vendor Rationalization And Category Strategy: Create category strategies across observability, security, CI/CD, verification, and analytics; standardize rate cards and Service Level Agreements (SLAs); reduce total cost, sprawl, and lock‑in risk.
  • RFP Design, Execution, And Negotiation Support: Design requirements, scorecards, and cost models; run RFPs for clean rooms, customer data platforms, mobile measurement, and QA tools; secure pricing, SLAs, and credits.
  • Vendor Management Office And Renewal Governance: Establish vendor management office, spend analytics, performance scorecards, quarterly business reviews, and renewal calendar; monitor consumption versus entitlements; prevent shelfware; maximize rebates and co‑op benefits.

Product

  • Platform Product Strategy And Modular Roadmap: Define modular product vision and roadmap across Demand‑Side, Supply‑Side, and Customer Data Platforms; prioritize differentiated use cases; accelerate competitive parity, expansion, and speed‑to‑market.
  • API And Developer Experience Productization: Design API‑first platform with SDKs, webhooks, sandbox, and docs; enable self‑serve onboarding; reduce integration time and friction; grow partner ecosystem and developer adoption.
  • Campaign Management UX And Workflow Automation: Redesign planning, targeting, pacing, and troubleshooting workflows; implement templates, bulk edit, and guardrails; cut time‑to‑launch, errors, and support tickets; improve usability and NPS.
  • Data Model And Event Schema Governance: Define canonical schemas for impressions, clicks, conversions, audiences, and feature events; implement versioning and contracts; improve interoperability, reporting accuracy, and integration stability across modules.
  • Product Analytics And Growth Experimentation: Instrument feature telemetry, funnels, and cohorts; run in‑product experiments and prompts; optimize onboarding, activation, and retention; drive product‑led growth and expansion revenue.

Organization

  • Platform Team Topology And Ownership Model: Define platform, data, and feature squads, service boundaries, Responsible‑Accountable‑Consulted‑Informed roles, and change authority; reduce dependencies, handoffs, and decision latency across the adtech platform lifecycle.
  • Spans And Layers Simplification And Role Architecture: Redesign job families, competencies, and levels across product, engineering, data science, solutions, and support; clarify accountability, accelerate hiring, enable mobility, and improve retention.
  • Go-To-Market And Customer Success Operating Model: Align sales engineering, onboarding, professional services, customer success, and support; standardize handoffs, playbooks, and escalation; lift net revenue retention, adoption, and time-to-value.
  • Global Delivery Footprint And Centers Of Excellence: Establish nearshore and offshore hubs for Site Reliability Engineering, Quality Assurance, support, and data operations; implement follow-the-sun coverage; lower cost-to-serve and improve uptime and responsiveness.
  • Incentives And Performance Management: Design Objectives and Key Results and compensation tied to uptime, latency, adoption, gross margin, and Net Revenue Retention; drive accountability, alignment, and continuous performance improvement.

Marketing

  • Category Design And Positioning: Define category narrative, messaging, and proof for Connected TV (CTV), retail media, clean rooms, identity; sharpen differentiation; increase awareness, win rate, and pricing power.
  • Demand Generation And Account-Based Marketing: Build integrated paid, content, webinar, and event campaigns; orchestrate Account-Based Marketing (ABM) with intent data; grow qualified pipeline and improve Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) payback.
  • Product Marketing And Launch Excellence: Craft messaging, value propositions, demos, and launch plans; run win‑loss and competitive intelligence; accelerate feature adoption, conversion, and average contract value.
  • Partner And Ecosystem Co-Marketing: Activate co-marketing with cloud, retailer media, publishers, and data partners; build marketplace listings and launch kits; drive partner-sourced pipeline and influenced revenue.
  • Developer Marketing And Community Growth: Build SDK docs, tutorials, sample apps, forums, and hackathons; publish roadmaps and changelogs; increase Application Programming Interface (API) adoption, integrations, and developer Net Promoter Score.

Pricing

  • Metering And Entitlement Design: Define billable events, metering pipelines, entitlements, throttles, and tier thresholds; ensure accurate usage billing, predictable overages, and scalable usage-based SaaS pricing.
  • Discounting, Deal Desk, And Price Governance: Establish guardrails, approval matrices, CPQ rules, and price waterfall analytics; raise price realization, reduce unwarranted discounting, and improve deal quality.
  • Marketplace Take-Rate And Rebate Mechanics: Optimize take-rate ladders, rev-share, minimums, and rebates across sell-side, buy-side, retail media, and data marketplaces; balance liquidity growth with margin expansion and platform competitiveness.
  • Renewal, Uplift, And Expansion Pricing Playbooks: Standardize renewal uplifts, auto-indexation, committed-use discounts, ramps, and multi-year options; increase Net Revenue Retention, ACV expansion, and reduce churn and downgrades.
  • International And Partner Pricing Localization: Set regional list prices, currencies, taxes, and reseller margins; define channel conflict rules and marketplace listings; protect net price, avoid arbitrage, and accelerate global adoption.

Sales

  • Enterprise Sales Strategy And Coverage Model: Segment by vertical and size; design territories, roles, and channel mix; raise pipeline coverage, win rate, and ACV in adtech and martech enterprise sales.
  • Sales Process And Methodology Enablement: Operationalize MEDDICC, stages, exit criteria, and mutual action plans; improve qualification, forecast accuracy, cycle time, and procurement win rate.
  • Partner, Channel, And OEM Sales Strategy: Architect reseller, MSP, SI, retailers, cloud marketplace, and OEM motions; define tiers, targets, co-selling, and incentives; expand distribution, sourced pipeline, and partner-sourced ARR.
  • Sales Enablement Content And Tools: Build playbooks, discovery guides, ROI calculators, security questionnaires, competitive battlecards, and references for CTV and retail media; increase seller productivity, win rate, compliance.
  • Pipeline Management And Forecast Governance: Establish pipeline hygiene, stage-weighting, forecast cadence, and deal reviews; integrate CRM dashboards; improve predictability, conversion, and quarter-close execution.

Finance

  • Usage-Based Revenue Recognition And ASC 606 Compliance: Implement Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 606 for subscriptions, usage, overages, and marketplaces; automate deferrals, variable consideration, principal‑agent, and breakage; shorten close and reduce audit findings.
  • SaaS FP&A And Unit Economics: Build financial planning and analysis (FP&A) linking volume drivers and COGS; model Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), Net Revenue Retention (NRR), lifetime value, payback; improve forecasts.
  • Quote-To-Cash Transformation And Billing Architecture: Redesign Configure‑Price‑Quote (CPQ), metering, invoicing, taxation, credits, and collections; enable usage‑based billing and proration; increase billing accuracy, reduce Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and disputes.
  • Cash Forecasting And Working Capital Optimization: Build cash forecasting for subscriptions, usage overages, marketplace settlements, and partner payouts; optimize terms, dunning, and approvals; reduce volatility, borrowing, and collection cycle time.
  • IPO Readiness And Finance Operating Model: Design IPO‑ready finance operations—fast close, consolidation, Sarbanes‑Oxley (SOX) controls, policies, audit readiness, and Board reporting; modernize Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and data foundations.

AI, Data & Analytics

  • Real-Time Bidding And Budget Optimization: Build bid shading, pacing, and multi-objective optimization for DSPs; increase win rate, improve CPA, and lift ROAS while controlling spend volatility.
  • Supply Quality Scoring And Fraud Detection: Train models for invalid traffic (IVT), viewability prediction, brand safety, and supply path quality; cut clawbacks and wasted impressions; raise billable viewable reach.
  • Impression And Audience Forecasting At Scale: Build time series and simulation for impression supply, reach, frequency, and overlap; improve availability accuracy, delivery confidence, and scenario planning for campaigns and deals.
  • Privacy-Preserving Audience Modeling And Lookalikes: Develop lookalikes and propensity models using clean rooms, federated learning, and differential privacy; expand addressable reach while meeting GDPR and CPRA requirements.
  • Real-Time Data Platform Feature Store And MLOps: Design streaming pipelines, online feature store, low-latency model serving, monitoring, and drift detection; meet sub-100ms scoring Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and raise uptime and accuracy.

Transformation

  • Enterprise Transformation Office And Value Realization: Establish transformation office with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), value tracking, cadence; coordinate cross-functional initiatives; deliver ARR growth, gross margin expansion, and uptime improvements.
  • Platform Consolidation And Tech Debt Reduction: Consolidate platforms and codebases, retire duplicative tools, sequence replatforming and decommissioning; cut tech debt, cost-to-serve, and accelerate roadmap velocity and reliability.
  • Product-Led Growth Operating Model Shift: Redesign operating model for product-led growth—self‑serve onboarding, telemetry, usage paywalls, and growth loops; lift activation, expansion, and Customer Acquisition Cost payback.
  • Post-Merger Integration And Carve-Out Execution: Plan and execute integrations or separations across tech stacks, data, contracts, and teams; protect uptime and customers; capture revenue and cost synergies on schedule.
  • Cost-To-Serve Reset And Margin Uplift: Run end-to-end cost reset—FinOps, automation, tiered support, partner leverage, and footprint optimization; improve gross margin, unit costs per event, and scalability.

Innovation

  • Venture Studio And Incubation: Establish venture studio, stage-gate funding, rapid prototyping for CTV, retail media, data products; validate problem-solution fit, unit economics, and scale winners faster.
  • Privacy Tech And Clean Room Pilots: Pilot data clean rooms, on-device modeling, differential privacy, and interoperable IDs with partners; prove privacy-safe targeting lift, compliance, and partner readiness.
  • CTV And Retail Media Format Innovation: Design and test interactive CTV, shoppable video, and retail media formats; run lab deals; increase attention, viewable reach, conversion, and platform take rate.
  • Generative Creative And Workflow Automation Experiments: Prototype generative creative, dynamic templates, and auto-tagging with human-in-the-loop guardrails; measure ROAS lift, creative throughput, and production cycle time reduction.
  • Browser And Mobile Privacy Sandbox Readiness Lab: Sandbox Google Privacy Sandbox APIs, SKAN 4, and ATT impacts; simulate cohorts and bidding; de-risk audience reach, frequency, and attribution continuity ahead of deprecation.

Compliance

  • Global Privacy Program And Regulatory Readiness: Design GDPR, CPRA, and ePrivacy compliance—RoPA, DPIAs, lawful basis, retention, DSAR tooling, transfer controls; embed privacy by design; reduce enforcement risk and rework.
  • IAB TCF And GPP Signal Compliance: Operationalize IAB TCF 2.2 and Global Privacy Platform governance across web, app, and CTV; audit vendor purposes and propagation; cut consent mismatches and exposure.
  • Children’s And Platform Policy Compliance: Implement COPPA, sensitive category restrictions, ATT, and Google Play policies; design age-gating and creative controls; prevent violations, app takedowns, and fines.
  • Security Certification Readiness And Controls: Prepare for SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001—policies, controls, monitoring, incident response; pass enterprise security reviews; accelerate procurement and shorten sales cycles.
  • Third-Party Risk And Data Processing Compliance: Establish vendor risk management, DPAs, subprocessor oversight, Schrems II SCCs, and audits; map data flows; lower breach, transfer, and contractual risk.

Program & Portfolio Management

  • Portfolio Prioritization And Funding Governance: Prioritize initiatives across DSP, SSP, CDP, clean room, and measurement; run stage gates and quarterly rebalancing; maximize ARR, NRR, margin, and compliance alignment.
  • Cross-Platform Release And Migration Orchestration: Coordinate release trains, backward compatibility, feature flags, and deprecations; manage client migration and partner dependencies; increase on‑time delivery and reduce production incidents.
  • Capacity And Resource Management: Design intake, sizing, and capacity allocation across product, engineering, data, and SRE; cut overload and WIP; improve predictability and velocity for roadmap and commitments.
  • Program Mobilization And Delivery Assurance: Stand up PMO, charters, RAID logs, critical paths, governance cadences; run health checks and recoveries; reduce schedule slippage, budget variance, and scope churn.
  • Benefits Realization And KPI Tracking: Define baselines and OKRs; track value to plan for ARR growth, gross margin, latency reduction, uptime, and cost‑per‑event; verify benefits to budget.

Information Technology

  • Real-Time Platform Architecture And Low-Latency Engineering: Design cloud-native, event-driven architecture for real-time bidding and decisioning; optimize p99 latency, throughput, and availability; reduce tech debt and accelerate feature delivery.
  • API And Partner Integration Platform: Deploy API gateways, rate limiting, schema governance, and webhooks; standardize Demand-Side Platform (DSP) and Supply-Side Platform (SSP) integrations; improve developer experience and onboarding speed.
  • Streaming Data Platform And Pipelines: Build streaming ingestion and processing with Apache Kafka and Flink; implement exactly-once pipelines, deduplication, and replay; improve data freshness, reliability, and attribution trust.
  • Site Reliability Engineering And Observability: Establish Service Level Objectives, tracing, monitoring, and chaos testing; harden incident response; increase 99.99% uptime, improve p99 latency, and decrease mean time to recovery.
  • Continuous Delivery And Test Automation At Scale: Implement Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), canary and blue-green deployments, feature flags, contract and performance testing; shorten release cycles, reduce rollback risk, and raise reliability.

Ad Operations & Trafficking

  • Trafficking Operating Model And SOPs: Standardize end-to-end trafficking workflows across IO intake, build, QA, launch, and change control; implement SLAs and playbooks; cut turnaround time, errors, and escalations.
  • Campaign QA And Creative Compliance Automation: Implement automated preflight checks for VAST/VMAP, MRAID, CTV specs, tracking macros, brand-safety, privacy flags; reduce live defects, rejections, and make-goods.
  • Taxonomy, Naming Convention, And Trafficking Data Governance: Define canonical naming, placement IDs, targeting taxonomies, and status codes; enable accurate reporting, reconciliation, and troubleshooting across ad server and programmatic workflows.
  • Pacing, Delivery, And Exception Management: Design pacing guardrails, anomaly alerts, and underdelivery playbooks; streamline reallocation, trafficking changes, and make-good policies; improve delivery accuracy and client satisfaction.
  • Tooling, Templates, And Workflow Automation: Deploy ticketing, bulk uploaders, macros, creative templates, and checklists; integrate with ad servers and QA tools; boost throughput, setup quality, and SLA adherence.

Identity & Consent Management

  • First-Party Identity Strategy And Graph Design: Design deterministic and probabilistic identity graph; unify customer, device, and household; map to UID2, ID5, RampID; increase match rates, addressable reach, and cross-channel activation.
  • Consent Management Platform Architecture And Signal Propagation: Deploy Consent Management Platform, IAB Transparency and Consent Framework 2.2 and Global Privacy Platform strings; propagate consent across web, app, CTV; cut mismatches and leakage.
  • Authenticated Traffic And Consented Data Capture Optimization: Optimize login prompts, progressive profiling, value exchanges, and permissions; increase authenticated traffic, opt-in rates, and first-party audience growth without degrading conversion.
  • Server-Side Tagging And Consent-Aware Data Collection: Design server-side tagging, consent gating, and event validation; improve signal fidelity, latency, and governance; future‑proof identity under cookie deprecation and Intelligent Tracking Prevention.
  • ATT, SKAdNetwork, And Privacy Sandbox Readiness: Design Apple AppTrackingTransparency prompts and SKAdNetwork postbacks; implement Google Privacy Sandbox Topics and Protected Audience; preserve addressability, frequency control, and compliant activation.

Measurement & Attribution

  • Incrementality And Experimentation Design: Build geo experiments, holdouts, and public service announcement tests; define sample sizes and guardrails; quantify lift and reallocate budget to return on ad spend channels.
  • Cross-Channel Attribution Model Calibration: Design multitouch attribution using Markov and Shapley; deduplicate identity; calibrate with experiments and Marketing Mix Modeling; produce reallocation guidance and incrementality‑adjusted ROAS.
  • Marketing Mix Modeling Modernization: Build privacy‑safe Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) covering Connected TV, retail media, search, and social; include lagged effects and saturation; calibrate with experiments; inform budget setting.
  • Clean Room Measurement And Deduplicated Reach: Stand up clean‑room analytics with Ads Data Hub, Snowflake, and Amazon Marketing Cloud; measure deduplicated reach, frequency, and conversion paths; enforce privacy controls and governance.
  • Privacy-First Mobile And Browser Attribution: Implement SKAdNetwork conversion schemas, Apple AppTrackingTransparency prompts, and Google Privacy Sandbox APIs; model delayed conversions; maintain metric continuity, deduplication, and actionable performance reporting.

Connect with the right consultant

Umbrex rapidly connects you with independent professionals who combine top‑tier consulting experience at firms such as McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group with hands‑on roles.

Find a consultant in our Adtech & Martech Practice

Prefer email? Write to [email protected]

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