• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, November 4, 2013

"I call into question that chart everyone has been talking about," Barry Lowenthal, president of MDC Partners' The Media Kitchen, said on a panel at this morning's OMMA Premium event. He was talking about the recent figures from Magna Global that say over half (53%) of all online display ad buys in the U.S. in 2013 will be bought programmatically. 

"I'd love to know who's actually spending 50% of their display budgets programmatically," he continued. "I don't know of anybody that is, so I don't know…where that data is coming from."

On Lowenthal's point of not knowing anyone actually spending 50% of their display budgets programmatically, it should be clarified that the data is about total buys, not total spending.

As if queued up ready to answer Lowenthal's question of "who," new data came out this morning saying that 85% of advertisers and 72% of publishers are using programmatic for their media buying and selling. In other words, almost everyone.

But just because so many traders are using programmatic doesn't mean they are buying that much inventory that way. Lowenthal questioned the 53% figure using Media Kitchen as an example.

"I know that at Media Kitchen probably about 20% of our non-search display is being bought programmatically," he said. "From what I've heard, that's fairly ahead of how a lot of the other holding companies are investing programmatically."

Basically, Lowenthal isn't exactly buying that everyone is buying programmatically. He added, "Unless it's all just audience extensions and it's being bought by ad networks, and I hope that's not the case."

But that's not to say Lowenthal doesn't believe in programmatic.

The panel moderator -- Steve Minichini, chief innovation and growth officer at TargetCast -- asked the panelists to briefly describe the next five years of programmatic. Lowenthal's response was just one word: "Exploding."

Jenna Gino, VP, programmatic media director at Havas, and Allegra Kadet, media director for Neo@Ogilvy, both said, "Growing."

Matthew Waghorn, communication planning director at Huge, predicted, "The future of programmatic outside of media planning and buying is in analytics and research."

Veronika Ward, east coast regional director, digital, at OMD had the final word. "In five years, programmatic buying will long have been something that every agency and every client is employing for their media campaigns and strategies, and we will be on to debating the role of the next best thing."

Check out the full "Premium vs. the Big Ad Machine: Is The High Touch Buy History?" panel below: