On Mad Men, Harry Crane is portrayed as a bit of a joke. Next to the brilliant copywriter Don Draper, the geeky TV buyer and his computer seem to play only a small part in the success of Sterling Cooper’s ad campaigns. But as programmatic advertising becomes the new norm, Harry may have the last laugh after all.

It’s no secret how much personal data each of us reveals to advertisers whenever we browse the web. Advertisers use this data to place ads that are targeted to a viewer’s likely needs and preferences. Although browsing reveals unprecedented levels of detail on user habits and demographics, the actual media buy to reach the viewer has been a more or less manual process based on the buyer’s knowledge of the particular sites or ad networks that can deliver the desired audience. Programmatic buying automates the process by finding the audience on an instantaneous basis and delivering the ad to it. This algorithmic process is analogous to the way ads are priced in real-time auctions by programs such as Google AdSense. As one programmatic buyer put is, the goal is for media buys to be as easy as buying a book on Amazon.

Does this mean that the media buy will trump creative? If a brand can put its message in front of consumers on a consistent and highly targeted basis, the package in which the message is wrapped may become less important. It may be so that “content is king” in television – at least that’s what network executives say. In advertising, however, the future may favor the guys who write the code, not the ones who write the copy.