• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, March 7, 2016

The industry needs to stop talking about programmatic as something that’s the opposite of manual. That was one of the messages delivered by Ruud Wanck, CEO Connect, GroupM Global, on Monday during the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Programmatic Marketplace event.

“Programmatic can’t be the opposite of manual, because you make split-second decisions—that’s no manual. Programmatic is also not the opposite of premium,” Wanck said. He added that Connect’s belief is that anything that can be bought programmatically will be.

Acknowledging that the programmatic marketplace has a real “integrity issue," Wanck said that while fraud and viewability are separate issues, to advertisers there is no difference. “When you sit on the side of the advertiser, you want an ad to be seen and you want it to be seen long enough. We have an urgency around these issues in the U.S. and globally… We have to cleanse ourselves and create a trusted marketplace.”

Wanck went on to position Group M’s Connect as a real-time investment management group that brings together all real-time and biddable media across search, mobile, social and other digital media channels, scaling data, inventory and technology at the same time.

“We’re trying to use the data to create engaging audiences at scale, that’s our goal,” Wanck said.  Most important is that when the industry talks about programmatic, "it doesn’t become a synonym for supply-chain risk.” In addition, programmatic shouldn’t be treated as something that’s completely separate and new:“It’s real-time media management.”