• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, January 24, 2013

For 2013, how does social fit into the growing business of programmatic ad buying and selling? Ari Bluman, Chief Digital Investment Officer at GroupM, is optimistic, primarily due to the well-received debut of Facebook Exchange in 2012. Beyond social, challenges facing the programmatic business in 2013 including getting the right RTB mix, and figuring out “how we can show that the system is supported by high-quality publishers,” Bluman told attendees of OMMA RTB on Thursday.

Launched in the fall of 2012, Facebook’s ad-bidding network was reportedly shaking up the ad business before the year was out. Launch partners told Wired last November that the system was already “delivering a huge volume of users with a strong propensity to click on ads and helping advertisers follow those users for longer periods of time than is possible under competing systems.”