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.

Charlene Weisler and I are putting the finishing touches on a series of interviews we conducted in the programmatic TV space. We queried representatives from four verticals: ascending programmatic TV advertising agencies (US International Media, Varick Media Management); pioneering platforms (TubeMogul, Videa); data-ists (Datalogix, Rentrak); and inquisitive content providers (TV channel Reelz, TV station group Nexstar). I mention these interviews, which often focused on the evolving meaningful, usable, data-infused research, as a segue to a recent incident that occurred in Chicago while visiting a client.

Audience data for TV has quickly become the defining trend for 2015. Like many other industries in the Big Data era, TV has never had so much data available before. Spending patterns from credit card databases are now matched to TV viewership trends. So are shopper card databases from retailers and auto registrations. With all this new data, it's possible to now know what Oreo cookie lovers watch on TV and which networks are big hits with United Airlines frequent flyers.