As marketing becomes more reliant on programmatic buys, agencies are needing to hire more technically-minded people, says Kristi Argyilan, President of Magna Global North America, MediaBrands, in this interview with Ashley J. Swartz at the recent Beet.TV executive retreat in Vieques, Puerto Rico. “We are starting to profile more like a financial portfolio management mindset. We are hiring more data scientists, more math people, people with some technology backgrounds,” she says, adding that finding the right talent is tough these days. “We are hoping automation will take some of the pressure off, but you always have to have the human judgement placed on top of anything machinery tells us and that’s where we have a problem from a talent perspective. And it will be a big battle for all of us to capture that talent.”
IPG, the parent company for Magna Global, is moving aggressively into automation and said it plans to automate 50% of all media buys by 2016. To reach that goal, the agency will need to smooth out a number of “bulky steps” in how it goes to market on many campaigns. That includes streamlining some of the planning to both reduce paperwork but also to link media channels more closely. “We want media planning to be a media blueprint, and we want to go into the market with all channels and you optimize the buy in the moment.”
For more insight into Magna Global’s multiscreen approach to automation check out this video interview.
