Exchange Wire is in conversation with Infectious Media's CEO & Co-Founder, Martin Kelly, regarding the rising potential of programmatic for advertisers.
While programmatic now dominates digital display, already accounting for 70% of UK ad spend and set to tip three-quarters by 2017, it hasn’t reached maturity yet.
According to speakers in ‘The Future of Marketing’ debate at this year’s ATS London, the technology itself may be advanced, but navigating the intricate web of disparate systems and data sets is a complicated challenge that requires fine-tuning.
Martin Kelly, co-founder and CEO at Infectious Media stated: “There has been a ton of change, everyone’s trying to evolve and the problem is we try and do everything we used to. […] The fundamental technology is sound, but it’s a people problem that sits on top.”
Kelly went on to share his view that, despite the scale programmatic has introduced to campaigns, fashioning them together is still a complex process that requires substantial manpower – and, therefore, the journey towards automation is only half finished.
For those fearing the rise of the bots, there was some assurance that realising the potential of programmatic doesn’t mean a machine-only industry. Cyrille Vincey, chief data officer at VE Interactive, argued that while programmatic is great for trading, it doesn’t fix bad creative or the difficulty of building appropriate ads for multiple screens. Vincey stated his belief that the best results come from a blend of tech and expertise, when science is used “to optimise models defined by humans”.