But one top-level exec in the space believes many of them will become convinced once early adopters’ success stories come down the pipe.

“The more marketers start trumpeting the value they get out of having the ability to target their core audience very accurately, coupled with great contextual content against which to serve the ads… I think the premium publishers will see a way to extend more of the inventory in to the programmatic space,” Chris Paul, GM of the Publicis-owned digital unit VivaKi’s Audience On-Demand division told Beet.TV’s recent Chicago programmatic video ad strategies summit.

Though some premium publishers may prefer to sell their own ad space in traditional display fashion, Paul assured: “They will be able to take advantage of the efficiencies that we see in the programmatic buying process.”

Paul was interviewed at the summit by Furious Minds CEO Ashley J. Schwartz. Watch the video for more.

But two ad tech executives speaking at Beet.TV’s Chicago programmatic video ad summit said algorithms can serve creatives, too – if creatives let their output be subjected to efficiency testing.

“I haven’t seen a dynamic solution that creative-tests dynamic creative,” said Starcom digital media director and SVP Tracey Paull.

“We need to go back to partners like our creative testing partners and get them to really figure out dynamic creative testing, so that the same principles we’re using at television and all the other places, we can actually then apply to get smarter creative.”

TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson echoed Paull’s views, adding: “The promise of programmatic is it streamlines everything. To the extent that you are going to multi-variant test different pieces of feedback, you can get really quick feedback.

“It’s pretty easy for someone at a media buying agency to load in different creatives with that exact same media and audience objectives, measure what’s working in real-time and optimize. In practice, that doesn’t happen enough.”

That’s according to the products and services VP of Publicis’ VivaKi digital group, Kurt Unkel.

“One of the fund challenges in the space is: ‘Is marketing an expense or is marketing an investment?’,” Unkel told Beet.TV’s Chicago programmatic video advertising summit.

“For certain types of vertical clients, it’s really clear how marketing is an investment – a dollar in is getting me five back … other clients don’t have a metric of that nature, a dollar out is a dollar out.”

For programmatic ad vendors, then, Unkel says a key consideration is: “How do I get to a measurement case that speaks to an ROI where clients realise a dollar here is dollar five there

“For clients that have that notion of an investment … they’re off to the races and doing amazing things.”

Unkel’s comments came as VivaKi’s operator, Publicis, agreed to merge with rival Omnicom, creating a holding company with a $35.1 billion market cap. AdExchanger speculates that the two groups might merge their Accuen and Audience On-Demand trading desks, which Forrester analyst Joanna O’Connell says says will continue becoming more integrated parts of their agency owners despite the deal

Leading  the”big data” effort at Publicis is the Chicago-based VivaKi agency and its Audience on Demand unit.  Earlier this month in Chicago, we organized a leadership summit on programmatic video advertising.   In this 14 minute excerpt, Audience on Demand General Manager Chris Paul explains the growth of programmatic, or automated advertising transactions and how his company is enabling this trend.

Interviewing Paul on stage is Ashley J. Swartz, a New York-based digital media consultant and CEO of Furious Minds.  The event was hosted by VivaKi and sponsored by TubeMogul.

More on the role of adtech on this merger in this post by Forrester analyst David Cooperstein.  And here’s the take on the impact of the merger on agency trading desks by David Kaplan at AdExchanger.

“The rate of which cookies are going away is greatly exaggerated,” advertising data group eXelate‘s chief marketer Khurrum Malik told this panel discussion during Beet.TV’s recent Chicago programmatic video ad summit. “Deletion rates are there – but cookies are still in bountiful abundance.

“Facts are facts – people are deleting cookies at a great rate … but there is the trend of utilizing first-party data mixed with third-party data … that’s driving accuracy in a better direction for cookies.”

In the discussion about data management platforms and programmatic ad buying, Vivaki’s Audience On Demand GM Chris Paul added: “So much of what we’re doing right now is a new way to get at an old problem … (but) I don’t think this shift would be happening if it wasn’t working.”

SpotXchange business development SVP Jeremy Straight added: “Publishers think of themselves as brands as well, they have to segment inventory in a way that makes it valuable to potential buyers.”

Watch the interview by Furious Minds CEO Ashley J. Swartz for more insights.

“Video is beautiful because it tell a story (for advertisers),” data company eXelate‘s marketing chief Khurrum Malik says in this taped panel interview at Beet.TV’s Chicago programmatic video ad summit. “The problem with programmatic video right now is, there’s not enough inventory.”

Malik bemoans that whilst, in display advertising, programmatic ad-buying techniques are scaling rapidly, not enough video ad space is yet available to programmatic platforms.

“It’s coming – it’s not there yet,” he says. “It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. When will the investments come in inventory? Well, when people believe there’ enough reach there.”

However, things are nevertheless growing fast, says Malik. eXelate’s business is made up 10% by video and that’s set to double over the next year, he says:

“We did a survey of 700 people – platforms, agencies and advertisers. Eighty-eight percent of them said they really believe audience targeting is effective. Seventy percent of them planned to increase budgets toward that by up to 40% or more.”

That question was tackled by video ad exchange SpotXchange‘s business development SVP Jeremy Straight during Beet.TV’s recent Chicago programmatic video advertising summit.

“Publishers realize the same efficiencies that maybe the agencies are seeing,” Straight told interviewer and Furious Minds CEO Ashley J. Swartz. “Maybe (they) don’t have a sales team of 300 people now because (they are) able to leverage some of the efficiencies (they are) gaining in programmatic means.

“Who knows if that will happen? We’re not here to replace a publisher’s sales team but to really give them the efficiencies of scale.”

Indeed, Straight said data yielded from programmatic can also help ad sales teams. “If I’m a large publisher and I can see Samsung is buying my inventory, I might go to that trading desk and say ‘My inventory is in high demand with you right now – can we put together a programmatic deal and run this through my platform?'”

TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson’s company has open-sourced code to let advertisers see what percentage of a video window is really in-view. But he thinks such data will soon make waves when it becomes more commonly available.

“I think, by the end of the year, you’ll start seeing some kind of standard around video viewability,” Wilson told Furious Minds CEO Ashley Schwartz in this taped interview at Beet.TV’s programmatic video advertising summit. “What percentage of video is viewable? We think it’s going to be pretty shocking once people start running these reports – maybe 50% of video right now is viewable.”

Such a number could spook many advertisers. But Wilson says the data will help distinguish quality traffic from poor.

“What happens when you roll out viewabiity is you expose the bad behaviour and the good behaviour. CPMs will go up for the best sites – big players that feel TV-like.” Losers from viewability data will include sites that try fooling the numbers by auto-playing videos in banners and playing third-party video, Wilson added.

Disclaimer: TubeMogul sponsored the summit on programmatic buying at VivaKi.

“What we provide for Starcom (Kellogg’s agency) is a system that provides them with a measure while the campaign is running of the frequency, targeting composition, and metrics that will help evaluate the campaign awareness and viewability,” he explains, adding that the marketer uses the tools in its programmatic buys to ensure the targeted ads are delivered most effectively, based on performance indicators such as impressions hitting the target, the targeting index and the frequency of the exposure, as well as branding metrics.

But precise targeting still faces challenges, Fulgoni adds. He points out that 30% of computers have their cookies deleted every month, which can lessen accuracy in targeting. Many machines are used by different people in a home, also throwing off the effectiveness of targeting. For more insight into challenges and opportunities in targeting, real-time buying and mobile advertising, check out this video interview.

Fulgoni was a participant in the Beet.TV Programmatic Video Advertising Summit hosted by VivaKi and presented by TubeMogul.

In this taped interview at Beet.TV’s programmatic video advertising summit, Brett Wilson said the marketplaces have created a new layer of mid-tier pricing: “You had your premium tier – where your direct sales force would sell $15-to$30 CPMs – and … then you’d have the bottom of the pyramid – $4 to $5 – you’re selling to ad networks.

“(Now) there’s this other level of pricing for a publisher that’s above remnant. For publishers, it can be a great thing – they can reduce their sales costs, they learn a lot, they can see who’s buying. this is why you’re seeing a lot more inventory become available – because it is working for publishers.”

Wilson was interviewed by Furious Minds CEO Ashley J. Swartz.

Disclaimer: TubeMogul sponsored the summit on programmatic buying at VivaKi

Many clients try display first and then move to programmatic buying for video. “If you’re comfortable in display, then video always seemed like a natural extension, but I don’t think clients are just jumping into programmatic without typically having an understanding first in display because we have more validation in display,” Paull explains.

Digital natives who understand the complexity of the medium are often driving the programmatic buying, but TV buyers are also intricately involved in helping make decisions about where spots should run and if video makes sense on a programmatic basis, she explains.

Swartz and Paull also delve into other digital topics such as marketing mix modeling, addressability and interactivity. Key issues in targeting include determining the precise demographics for a targeted buy, and whether any additional impressions count as waste or as spill, she says. Next up, Paull would like to see more research on the value of content adjacency for video ads.

Paull was a participant in the Beet.TV Programmatic Video Advertising Summit hosted by VivaKi and presented by TubeMogul.

“Today, media is always outpaced from a technology perspective relative to creative,” Publicis’ VivaKi digital unit products president Kurt Unkel told Furious Minds CEO Ashley Schwartz in this taped interview at Beet.TV’s programmatic video advertising summit.

“Crafting stories that really communicate to people in a cadence that will make sense is … going to be something that, over the next 12 to 18 months, as an industry, we’re going to see a lot of focus on.”

Unkel said connecting programmatic tactics that are booming with creativity ad divisions would become more important. He added about 30% to 40% of digital video ads served by VivaKi were delivered using addressable techniques.

Digital video ad spend is slated to hit $4.6 billion next year, up from $3.6 billion this year, he says, citing Forrester statistics. Real-time buying should comprise $686 million this year and surpass $1 billion next year. “We view RTB as a buying mechanism within the programmatic ecosystem,” he says.

We interviewed Straight in Chicago at the VivaKi  offices. Straight was a participant in the Beet.TV Programmatic Video Advertising Summit hosted by VivaKi and presented by TubeMogul.

“People think about display as ‘top of funnel’ and ‘bottom of funnel’ – branding and direct response,” eXelate marketing chief Khurrum Malik tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

“With video, it’s very ‘top of funnel’ right now. Data is being utilised from a demo perspective a lot – age and gender is really powering a lot of video targeting. If you go too far down the funnel in video right now, the inventory gets really small.

“We’re seeing people staying at the top of the funnel, using demo data, because that’s where they get most reach.”

“Video is much deeper immersion – people are having a hard time getting direct response from it. So we’re staying at the top of the funnel for online video.”

One of the biggest current industry efforts is using data to help video ads reach specific audiences in the same way web display ads do nowadays. Exelate itself specializes in providing demographic data and analytics to advertisers.

We interviewed eXelate’s Malik earlier this month at the Beet.TV programmatic video advertising summit, where is was speaker

“The combination of experiential marketing and addressable marketing is where you find the real sweet spot and the best ROI in your marketing campaigns,” Chris Paul, GM of Publicis and VivaKi’s Audience On-Demand (AOD) programmatic unit, tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

Paul told us the ad-buying process “should get significantly better” thanks to the new programmatic techniques. “Folks coming in to this industry and getting introduced to it for the first time are spending most of their time reconciling invoices and dealing with billing. It’s a major time suck and takes time away from folks who have a lot of creative ideas.

“If we can limit — and nearly eliminate in many cases — the time they spend on individual insertion order and campaign reconciliations … that leaves them free to focus on that experiential piece.”

Publicis and VivaKi launched AOD in 2008, comparable with WPP’s own in-house programmatic platform, Xaxis. We interviewed Paul earlier this month at the Beet.TV programmatic video advertising summit.

“Rich media makes a big difference in behavior and attitudinal results,” Doyle tells us. In addition, VivaKi found that the ad format needs to match the content, meaning interactive polling for instance ups the video ante, while full-page rich media banners perform better than standard ones.

The challenge in adding more interactivity to tablet marketing is that standards and scale aren’t yet in place, so customization is often necessary. Vivaki has also worked with AOL to study the best performing online ad models to determine how effective different types of interactivity are in online ads.

We interview interviewed her at VivaKi headquarters in Chicago following our leadership summit on online video advertising.

“As an agency we want to stand behind a single verification platform,” she says, adding that the strategic partnership helps Starcom to focus on making better buys for clients. However, she adds that Starcom will continue to support client work that’s based on Nielsen online data, even though comScore’s VCE is the agency’s preferred partner. The decision helped negotiations during the recent TVs upfronts, she says. “So much of the debate is about which platform to use and we wanted to get beyond the debate,” she explains.

We interviewed Paull in Chicago at the Starcom offices. Paull was a participant in the Beet.TV Programmatic Video Advertising Summit hosted by VivaKi and presented by TubeMogul.

The new comsCore product was first introduced with VideoHub.

Now, comScore is rolling out its own viewability product, says comScore co-founder and executive chairman Gian Fulgoni, in this video interview with Beet.TV’s Ashley Swartz.   We spoke with him last week at our leadership summit on programmatic video advertising where he was a participant.

Some of the companies in the program are Flite, Mass Relevance, Nativo and Visible Measures.  Hyder says the agency plans to expand its portfolio of start-ups to around 25 by the end of the year.

The agency does not make an equity investment but provides consulting and marketing services in exchange for preferred services for  VivaKi clients.  We interviewed Hyder at the VivaKi headquarters in Chicago where Beet.TV produced an ad tech leadership summit.

Separately, Publicis, through it’s Iris venture capital unit, has invested in Flite.

At the  Cannes Lions last month, VivaKi provided a showcase for several of the start-ups.   You can find our coverage of Flite and Mass Relevance from the advertising festival.

Swartz, who heads the New York-based consultancy Furious Minds, moderated the three hour session with participants from comScore, eXelate, SpotXchange, Starcom, TubeMogul and Vivaki.    Segments of the session will be published over the next several days.