We always give the agency folks their fair share of teasing when it comes to ad creatives and agency culture stereotypes, but ad tech is just as ripe for mocking.
We already did the “38 Signs You’ve Been in Advertising Agencies Too Long,” so now we give you a list for you special ad tech people. Here are 28 signs that you’ve been in ad tech too long. Add any we forgot in the comments, or tweet them to @digiday.
1. You use at least two acronyms in every sentence you speak or write — even if you are addressing people who aren’t in the industry.
2. You’re on a first-name basis with the Ad:Tech booth babes.
3. You’ve worked at 15 different logos on the Lumascape.
4. You’ve pivoted five times — and are thinking of the sixth.
5. You’re sick of carving off a penny per CPM.
6. You just closed your series G round.
7. You’re spending time on the weekends arguing on Adexchanger with other DSPs over whose RTB is truly RTB.
8. You know what the old-timers list is. (via @lowbrowkate)
9. You think a .1 percent response rate is pretty damn good.
10. You have 35 Casale Media notebooks.
11. You once asked Terry Kawaja for an autograph.
12. You never get your DSPs, DMPs, SSPs and RTB mixed up. (via @aweinroth)
13. You remember when petabytes of data sounded big.
14. You’re considering a Big Data tattoo.
15. You got kicked off the Affiliate Marketing cruise.
16. You tweet 185 times a day, involving yourself into any discussion of ad tech.
17. You make RTB analogies during sports games.
18. Your spouse actually understands the Lumascape.
19. You’ve convinced yourself that buying ads from toolbar providers isn’t ripping off publishers.
20. You get excited when you’re retargeted by Zappos.
22. You wear around a DSP-branded red hooded sweatshirt everywhere you go.
22. You call yourself an “ad tech socialite.”
23. You keep telling people, “The direct mail guys are way worse, you know.”
24. You’re used to parties where the line is 15-deep for the men’s room and there’s no line at the ladies.’
25. You call anything — a website, tool, whatever — a “platform.”
26. You argue vehemently there’s something called “fourth-party data.”
27. You point to your number of queries per second as evidence of success.
28. You have a personal motto of “mo data, mo better.”
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