More and more marketers, reacting to the chaos of fragmented TV viewership by digging deeper into when their target audiences are watching TV, find they need to relax their content restrictions as a result. And thanks to online media's capacity to demonstrate the relationship of advertising expenditure to business outcomes, there is a slew of proof that valuable audiences are available around the media clock.

There was a Panglossian philosophy, the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology, espoused around the time of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which stressed that "things cannot be otherwise than they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end." TV programmatic, for example.

Digital demand-side platforms (DSPs) have set the bar for what today's media planners and buyers require. Intuitive user interfaces, easy application of first- and third-party audience data sets, automated workflows and daily reporting of campaign delivery and optimization are becoming table stakes to compete in today's media business. These platforms are the media planner's equivalent of logging into Ameritrade daily to manage a stock portfolio vs. waiting for a printed statement at the end of the month in the mail.

The television industry right now is very lucky. It is being challenged by a host of technology and business innovations shorthanded with the term "programmatic." Unlike other business revolutions, there is a near-perfect precedent for programmatic TV: digital. (This is no accident; digital ad concepts - and people - are making this new TV revolution happen.) I have made this comparison in past columns; today I will focus on programmatic media measurement.