Interview: VisualDNA’s Jim Hodgkins on making programmatic smarter

What will distinguish the next phase of programmatic advertising – and how is programmatic embracing data in new ways?

Newsline caught up with VisualDNA’s managing director of marketing services, Jim Hodgkins, to understand the challenges and opportunities in this high growth market.

“We have to treat programmatic as a very young discipline – and because we’ve developed this very complex ecosystem it’s going to go through a few stages of growth,” he said.

“Right now we’re faced with some key opportunities to make programmatic a better environment for the consumer…and we have things like ad-blocking that look like they’re a dark spot on the horizon.”

Hodgkins said the onus is now on the entire industry – from publishers to adtech providers – to work out what the solutions are to make programmatic a “key component” of media consumption.

“Right now we’re behaving a bit like a young infant,” he said, adding that while consumer data is available, industry is still struggling to make sense of it all and that the industry is behaving almost “selfishly” in the way it is delivering ads.

While Hodgkins thinks that many creative agencies have their work cut out with programmatic, he says a “huge revolution” is on the horizon.