CHICAGO – Online video is booming – but not enough to make for a big programmatic advertising business yet, one video ad exec tells Beet.TV.

“Video is beautiful because it tell a story (for advertisers),” data company eXelate‘s marketing chief Khurrum Malik says in this taped panel interview at Beet.TV’s Chicago programmatic video ad summit. “The problem with programmatic video right now is, there’s not enough inventory.”

Malik bemoans that whilst, in display advertising, programmatic ad-buying techniques are scaling rapidly, not enough video ad space is yet available to programmatic platforms.

“It’s coming – it’s not there yet,” he says. “It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. When will the investments come in inventory? Well, when people believe there’ enough reach there.”

However, things are nevertheless growing fast, says Malik. eXelate’s business is made up 10% by video and that’s set to double over the next year, he says:

“We did a survey of 700 people – platforms, agencies and advertisers. Eighty-eight percent of them said they really believe audience targeting is effective. Seventy percent of them planned to increase budgets toward that by up to 40% or more.”