NAPA, CA — Computer maker Lenovo’s digital marketing director has given a big endorsement to the emerging practice of automated, algorithmically-controlled online ad buying.

“From a brand perspective, this move to programmatic is very important to us,” Gary Milner tells Beet.TV in this video interview during TubeMogul University, a TubeMogul customer event. “You’ve got a merging of creative and platforms and media all together – that needs to be managed very efficiently and effectively.”

Some liken the imminent effect programmatic will have on the ad industry to how computerized stock trading eliminated human traders from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the nineties, believing Madison Avenue will be similarly gutted.

But Milner says: “The traditional ways of buying media manually, with invoices and manual reporting, is going to be much more difficult to manage if the inventory keeps growing globally. Software platforms allow you to be very efficient at doing this, and turn jobs from being 40% administrative to being very analytical.”