Nowadays, programmatic digital ad-buying technology automates targeted ad buying and removes the task from human operators. But those ad buyers should rejoice at throwing off the shackles of the mind-numbing task, according to a GroupM executive.

“What programmatic does is free up resource,” Caspar Schlikum, the EMEA managing director of GroupM’s data-centric ad unit Xaxis, told Beet.TV’s recent London Video Ad Strategy Summit.

“In the past, ‘pesky humans’ were doing a lot of things that were process-driven. They were super-boring and very repetitive, and often mistakes were made. That’s something that no media planner in their right mind wants to do.”