One of the impediments to the acceptance of TV programmatic platforms by the ensconced TV buying community is the concern over whether there will ever be sufficient "quality" inventory -- a.k.a. broadcast and cable network programs in traditionally valued dayparts -- available for the wonders of a transparency-automated, workflow-efficiencied, and third- and first-partied, mixologized-data platform that propels the TV planning and purchasing process into the digital epoch. There's precedent, with myriad examples of broadcasters and cablers swapping their most valued video inventory with outside sales entities for cash or the promise thereof. From the beginning:

Melanie is a colleague of mine who is an exceptional marketer. Melanie is also a self-described shoe fashionista. Digital marketers know plenty about Melanie's shoe shopping habits, along with the habits of her fellow shoe fashionista friends. They know she shops at Gilt, Zappos, Rue LaLa and Nordstrom. They likely know the type of shoes she's going to buy almost as soon as Melanie knows it. But in TV, we've known so little about Melanie -- in fact, all we know is that she is a female, aged 18-34. So until now, we haven't been able to get a clear …

Facebook's announcement that its mobile app will start to act like Shazam and "listen" to your music and TV choices has struck some as creepy and invasive. Privacy is always a concern to me as a person. But as a professional, what's interesting is the fact that Facebook is helping the TV data revolution go massively mainstream. That revolution is being fueled by an emerging class of TV data-gathering, using a process called automated content recognition, or ACR. What's revolutionary is that ACR is democratizing TV data gathering, promising to inject into the marketing and media mainstream what had been …

The promises of digital were faster execution, more accurate measurement, and more robust targeting than TV had ever seen, And yet, TV is still where the budgets are. No matter how many strides digital has made, TV is still king. TV can learn from digital, but those lessons aren't to be found in the RTB world, which is where most of us have been looking. Before TV can realize its programmatic future, digital needs to.