Speaking to Media Week following his address to the audience at the AOP Autumn Conference, Cain said: "A point was made earlier by Google that it's all about data analysis now, it's about the analytics side of your business, it's about understanding your audience characteristics and having systems in place to capture that data, and I think that every publisher – to different degrees – is going down that route.
"There is a whole new skill set within media owners now, which is about data analysis, database building and interrogation of analytics and that's a skill set you'll see turning up more and more within publishing operations."
During his presentation of the 2013 AOP Content and Trends Census, Cain said 32 per cent of its digital publishers expect growth to exceed 20 per cent over the next 12 months. The largest proportion of publishers (35 per cent) expects growth of between six and 10 per cent.
This year's census of AOP members found 65 per cent of publishers expect to increase the use of private marketplaces in the next year, while 75 per cent expect Real Time Bidding (RTB) to play an increasing role in commercial plans
Cain said this shift towards data would also be reflected in the recruitment of media agency staff and the new breed of planners already emerging.
He said: "There's a thrown-about kind of phrase that maths graduates are the area of focus for agencies and the recruitment area at the moment, and I think that's probably true.
"Agencies are going to look for efficiency in buying and a lot of that efficiency is going to come through a more automated way of trading, which means understanding the analytics that affect the transaction between buyer and seller."
However, Cain admitted that face-to-face trading was not going to disappear altogether.
He said: "At the other end of the spectrum there are those more bespoke, creative, more unique relationships [with publishers] that agencies are also very interested in developing for their key brands and that publishers are then able to provide because of that strength of bond they have between their audience and their content."
He rejected a suggestion that the move towards data analysis and capture would make the online publishing sector less risk averse in launching new titles on instinct.
Cain said: "At the current time, data is an important part of the business, but it's not the whole part of the business and I don't think you'll ever change that.
"Data is great in identifying an audience, but you still have to deliver a message to an audience in a certain way and that requires creativity."
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