Big brands are now become savvier around advertising in mobile apps, while “programmatic buying” – using software to determine decision-making – is set to become the main way in which app publishers and advertisers do business.

That’s according to Victor Milligan, chief marketing officer for mobile advertising exchange Nexage (pictured), who told Mobile World Live: “The overwhelming tide of consumer sentiment to mobile is now truly affecting premium publishers and brand advertisers’ strategies. Now you’re seeing them mobilise to the opportunity.”

Milligan said programmatic buying, which he described as advertising buyers and sellers making real-time decisions “at the most granular level possible” but at high scale, is the biggest trend in mobile advertising.

Put another way, programmatic buying is the automated buying and selling of ads using a range of data (advertising inventory, consumer data, ad formats) to inform decisions. It is usually used in a real-time auction context, with buyers paying whatever ads are worth at a given moment in time.

Nexage expects the approach to account for more than 50 per cent of spend on its ad exchange by the end of 2014, rising to more than 90 per cent in the near future.

“It is a fundamental shift in the technology and the business model of digital advertising. It’s going to be the technology foundation of advertising,” Milligan asserted.

In addition, higher-end developers now want to only interact with a selected group of brands through private exchanges or using the programmatic direct approach.

“Publishers have more methods to sell in a way that they control. The buyers have higher certainty about being able to see the impression,” Milligan explained. “So both gain value along the way.”

From a starting point of zero at the beginning of 2013, around 25 per cent of mobile advertising spend via Nexage was conducted through private exchanges and programmatic direct by the end of the year. And this is likely to rise to 50 per cent by the end of 2014.

“Our goal is to create liquidity, the ability to buy and sell easily, where both parties benefit,” Milligan commented.

Nexage currently works with more than 300 publishers and developers, with around 70 per cent of advertising sold on the company’s exchanges going into mobile apps.