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.”

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.

“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.