One of the hotly-discussed innovations at Dmexco 2016 was ‘header bidding’, a technology which promises to unify advertiser demand for publishers, and help them to boost digital ad revenues.

M&M Global teamed up with PulsePoint to gather a group of programmatic experts, to help answer key questions around this year’s trending topic.

So, how will the journey to unified demand evolve over the coming 12 months?

Ben Hancock, global head of programmatic trading, CNN International, says he is focused on the transition to unified auctions, as well as a “simpler” ad tech ecosystem for publishers: “What we see quite a lot is, when we work with new vendors, [they don’t] bring in unique demand for us, which is crucial. If we’re working with multiple vendors all accessing the same demand, it means more bids and a more complicated auction, so simplifying that access to demand for us would be a big step forward.”

For Gareth Shaw, vice president, programmatic operations EMEA at PulsePoint, while display and mobile web have led the way with header bidding, he sees areas such as video and native reaching a critical mass of inventory to allow the technology to branch out.

“I think we’ve come a long way with programmatic – it’s just about fulfilling that promise. Bringing in more brand dollars is massive – I want to do more of that, and publishers want to as well. [We need to] refine the tools to make it simpler and easier to make that happen,” he says.

Watch the full video below