Only a few decades ago, a media agency’s main role was to help its clients choose which mass media buys would be best to help them reach their audience with their message. The rise of digital media has reshaped this aspect of the business, changing the conversation from one about media channels and outlets to one about data and technology.
The programmatic platforms we work with as a digital agency – such as Google, Meta, TikTok, and X – might make their money by selling ad space, but they are not publishers or media houses in the traditional sense, because they don’t produce or publish content. They are technology platforms and their role is to deliver ads to consumers in the most cost effective way at the right moment in time.
This is a new world of personalised marketing, driven by consumer data, algorithms and digital platforms where mastering marketing technology (martech) tools is key to success. Martech tools enable agencies and brands to automate key processes and manage massive datasets, capabilities which are essential to success in a world where organisations want to reach relevant customers with personalised, contextually relevant messages at great scale.
Demand for these tools has grown exponentially and innovation in this space has flourished, with artificial intelligence (AI) spurring the latest advances in the market. According to The State of Martech 2025 report from chiefmartech, the selection of tools has expanded a hundred-fold since 2011. In the past year alone, the number of solutions chiefmartech tracks has grown by around 1,400 to 15,384 solutions.
Even with the traditional martech players starting to consolidate, there has been an explosion in new AI native players. It has become increasingly difficult for agencies and brands alike to keep pace with the speed at which new products are coming to market. As an agency, our challenge is twofold: skilling up in the technology platforms that enable us to fulfil our role plus guiding clients in which tools to use in their own environments and how to unlock their full value.
Here are some tools we are finding valuable in helping our clients get more from the ad platforms. The list is not exhaustive and it is growing all the time.
Creative solutions
Creatopy: This AI-powered tool can generate or resize banners at scale, helping marketers save time and costs by effectively producing multiple banner options which enable greater split testing. It also enables media agencies to quickly adapt and resize banners according to the specifications of different platform without needing a developer to create additional sizes.
Google Veo 3: Google released the latest version of its text-to-video generative AI model in May 2025. Unlike earlier versions, Veo 3 can generate videos with synchronised audio, such as dialogue, sound effects and ambient noise. This makes it possible for even small companies to start producing video ads that look slick and professional.
Google Flow AI: This generative AI-powered filmmaking platform lets creators generate cinematic video clips and assemble scenes from text-to-video prompts, imported assets or images. Where Veo 3 is about generating individual video clips, Flow offers the tools to plan, edit and orchestrate longer stories that leverage video assets.
Gemma: Gemma is a family of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models built from the same research and technology used to create the Google Gemini models. The marketing use cases are numerous, including drafting content (ad copy, social posts, email campaigns, and blog outlines), summarising audience insights, and SEO optimisation. It includes tools and principles to support responsible AI use.
Whisk: This GenAI image remixing tool by Google lets you drag and drop existing images as inputs for subject, style or scene. It uses Gemini to caption and interpret those inputs, then feeds that into Imagen 3 for AI-generated remixes. It’s a useful way to freshen up existing image assets as well as experiment with bold creative ideas.
Contentful: Content management system (CMS) platforms like WordPress have served companies well for years. But many of them were built around monolithic code bases and started out as blogging platforms. Larger companies delivering content across websites, mobile apps, Internet of Things devices, digital displays and even virtual reality (VR) are now looking at ‘headless’ CMS solutions to cater for an omnichannel world.
Contentful, for example, separates the front-end interface (the head) from the back-end content. Content can be delivered to any front-end via an application programming interface. It makes it easier for teams to design structured content types (e.g., product, article, author) without forcing them into a “page” or “post” model. Much of this functionality is difficult to achieve from older CMS platforms without lots of patchwork and plugins.
While more flexible and developer-centric, a headless CMS can also be more expensive and complex to manage, so it is not for every company.
Customer insight
BlueConic: This customer data platform (CDP) centralises first-party customer data from multiple sources into unified real-time profiles and then activates those insights across channels with AI-driven segmentation. For marketers, this means a single view of the customer that can power personalisation and improve conversions in real time. This is a powerful business solution, but implementing a CDP can be complex and time-consuming.
Gemini Deep Research: Gemini Deep Research is a feature in Google’s Gemini Advanced AI assistant that can serve as your personal research agent. It plans multi-step searches, refines queries, and produces synthesised reports with source link. For marketers, it can accelerate competitive research, trend analyses, and report generation that would otherwise take hours. It is available to Gemini Advanced subscribers. As always with GenAI, a human should review all reports and data for accuracy and context.
Hotjar: Hotjar is a behaviour analytics platform that helps marketers understand how users interact with websites. It captures clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements, turning them into heatmaps, funnels and session recordings. The tool explains what users did, not why, so marketers often need to pair it with surveys or qualitative research for deeper insight.
Unbounce: This SaaS platform is used for building and optimising marketing landing pages, pop-ups and sticky bars that help drive conversions. There’s an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder, templates and AI-driven optimisation features like Smart Traffic and dynamic text replacement. Built-in A/B testing and analytics makes it useful for rapidly creating and testing campaign-specific landing pages.
Platform integration tools
Stape: This server-side tagging solution simplifies data tracking with Google Tag Manager (GTM). It sidesteps ad blockers and browser restrictions, improving data accuracy and reliability. The main drawback is some added complexity. Server-side tagging requires technical setup and ongoing monitoring that may not suit smaller teams without specialist support.
Zapier: Zapier is a no-code automation platform that connects over 8,000 apps through “Zaps” (trigger for action workflows). For marketers, it automates repetitive tasks such as pushing form submissions into CRMs, posting new content to social media, or syncing performance data across platforms. The advantages are time savings, reduced errors and the ability to build workflows without developer input.
Porter Metrics: Porter Metrics is a no-code business intelligence tool designed for marketing and sales reporting. It consolidates data from ad platforms, social channels, CRM and ecommerce systems into visual dashboards in reporting tools like Looker Studio or Google Sheets. Even smaller businesses can use Porter Metrics to build charts, funnels, tables, maps and custom reports that are interactive and shareable.
Identifying the tools that will add value
As these examples show, the martech landscape is richer and more complex than ever. The challenge for brands and agencies is identifying which tools will genuinely deliver return on investment. At midnight, our philosophy is to be open-minded but clear-eyed in selecting new tools. Tools that score highly against the following questions are worth piloting and potentially scaling.
Revenue impact: Will this tool help drive growth by lowering acquisition costs, increasing lifetime value or improving customer experience?
Capability unlock: Does it open up a new marketing capability we don’t already have or do it better than current tools?
Usability: Is it easy to implement, scale, and maintain without draining internal resources?
Integration: Can it connect seamlessly with the rest of our technology stack and existing workflows?
Fit for purpose: Does it deliver on the specific use case we’re trying to solve?
Future readiness: Is it compliant, adaptive, AI-enabled, and able to evolve as regulations, technology, and customer expectations change?