Software vs. Services: Is There Really A Difference?

Many of the more interesting companies are primarily managed services, from social analytics firm Synthesio to ad server Trueffect.
Of course, when it comes to economics, software looks more enticing than services. Software gross margins average 75% vs. 40% for services, according to PwC. And the IAB estimates that 20% of digital advertising is executed by one machine talking to another.
WPP claims to have invested more than $1 billion in technology, much of it gathered under its ad tech umbrella Xaxis. Xaxis shows the forces at work. Calling itself a programmatic media and technology platform, it offers both engineers (280 at last count) and engineered platforms. In the past year, it acquired contextual ad-tech company Crystal Semantics and spun up a data-management platform called Turbine.
http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/software-vs-services-is-there-really-a-difference/