• by Joe Mandese , March 24, 2015

The so-called “programmatic direct” marketplace is disrupting relationships between agencies and publishers right now, but that’s a necessary step to get to a smoother world where they can interact more optimally -- and more directly -- to the benefit of brand marketers.

That was Carol Chung’s point of view on the “Programmatic Direct” panel discussion at the Programmatic Insider Summit in Scottsdale, AZ.

“I have big plans for programmatic,” the senior vice president-media technology at DigitasLBi told summit attendees, adding, “I think programmatic is going to be everything.”

She acknowledged there will be inevitable hiccups during the current transitional phase, because agencies, brands and publishers are still sorting process and markets out, but in the long run, she believes “programmatic direct is a slam dunk,” because it will just make all parties work more efficiently and effectively.

“We’re going through some major disruption with all of our publisher partners,” she conceded, alluding that DigitasLBi currently is in the process of onboarding all of it’s programmatic direct publisher partners on to one centralized platform that will ultimately take friction and inconsistency out of the process.

Once that works through, Chung believes programmatic direct buys will skyrocket and conceivably could be “100%” of all direct-to-publisher buys, depending on how you define it.

Currently, she says there is too much discussion around processes -- and issues, like transparency and arbitrage -- and not enough on “strategy.” Ultimately, she believes, all digital media agency people will be programmatic traders, because it will just become another tool in their box to activate digital campaigns.

“They’re going to become programmatic traders,” she said of agency digital media strategists, planners and buyers.

“It’s all one thing,” she said. “It’s the future. We just need to get there.”