The real-time bidding segment of online video is on track to hit $686 million in ad spend this year, but the business still faces a number of challenges on its route to growth, according to a new report released today from Forrester.  At the Beet.TV retreat earlier this year, Ashley Swartz, the founder and CEO of the New York-based consultancy Furious Minds, talked to Forrester analyst Joanna O’Connell about the hurdles ahead in the real-time bidding sector of online video.“What needs to happen is both parties need to recognize the more intelligence they bring to the table, the better they’ll do, but the publishers aren’t there yet, and they have a long way to go in understanding the audience they have to sell and the yield maximization across channels,” O’Connell explains.

Agencies too are trying to figure out how to best manage the quick rise in programmatic buying. The implementation of trading desks inside agencies can help significantly, she says. “We’ll see agencies start to evolve in the way they’re organized,” she says. Publishers, likewise, need to make sure they have sophisticated and savvy salespeople leading the charge when talking to agencies about programmatic buying.

For more insight, check out this video interview.

-Daisy Whitney