• Gartner, Wednesday, February 22, 2017 6:45 AM

In a conversation on Gartner's blog, Martin Kihn profiles Megan Pagliuca, CEO of Omnicom Media Group’s Accuen and characterizes her as "'inspiring the next evolution of programmatic' by focusing on open pricing, automation, elevating machine-driven media from a line item into a strategic plan." Pagliuca recalls her days at Right Media before it was acquired by Yahoo in 2007. "At Yahoo, I took over deploying the SSP to Yahoo globally for Yahoo’s own inventory. They had bought us, but we all spent a lot of the time convincing them why they wanted to be in the [programmatic] business. The fear of price cannibalization of their class one inventory ensured an ongoing war with the Right Media change agenda versus many on the Yahoo side," Pagliuca recalled. Fast forward to 2017 and she makes a bold prognistication: "From inception to completion, it will probably be 15-20 years until 100% of media is transacted programmatically. We lost the battle at Yahoo, but we won the war."

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