LONDON — Programmatic buying widens the playing field in online video because it lowers the cost, says Nigel Waring, Director of Performance Marketing and Biddable Media at SMG during an interview with Beet.TV. “Traditionally it has been difficult to make video work because of the cost barrier. But when it’s allied to real-time buying you can optimize in terms of the price you are paying,” he says.

Price isn’t the only benefit though. The real key that’s been driving the growth of programmatic buying in the last year is precision targeting, he says. “When you can start delivering the right message to the right person at that right time, that’s going to have much more impact,” he says. Because of the targeting capabilities of programmatic buying, he expects to see it expand deeper across screens and media types to encompass search, social and mobile across devices. “It’s not just a new way of buying cost-efficiently; it’s about leveraging data and signals about the consumer to make the targeting more accurate.” Programmatic buying will become a major part of budgets, especially as agencies harness the customer data from these campaigns, he adds.

We spoke with Waring as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over the next four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.