TV advertising is far from dead; it's just ready for a massive change. Programmatic TV, the automation and optimization of the TV ad buy, is the sea change bound to transform the industry. Goodbye fax orders, goodbye one-time planning with fixed campaigns, goodbye GRPs. Why?

The advertising industry has been using audience data in digital media for about a decade. In that time, we've discovered one ultimate truth: first-party data is king. For instance, retargeting is usually the best digital tactic on direct-response campaigns, while third-party data helps to provide scale but doesn't perform nearly as well. And with the proliferation of programmatic media, advertisers have new ways of leverage their first-party data. Enter audience data 2.0.

The transition to programmatic, despite moves by companies such as Demand Media in eliminating direct sales, is initially creating more jobs. The fear among the seller marketplace that programmatic would eventually eliminate the need for digital salespeople has not come to fruition (yet!). In fact, the industry has had to get smarter and more structured to handle this growing momentum - and so new jobs are being created throughout the ecosystem.

To keep kids out of trouble, mothers like to use common proverbs like "What you don't know won't hurt you." But if programmatic advertisers had a mother, she would avoid giving the same advice because "what you don't know about programmatic will definitely hurt you." The first blind spot for advertisers is not knowing where your programmatic budget really goes -- and how little actually buys viewable media. This pain point is clearly revealed once you've seen your own cascading waterfall of programmatic transaction fees.

Last week, Real-Time Daily's Tyler Loechner wrote about the in-house dilemma brands are facing by saying: "It has become quite the catch-22 for many marketers: They want to keep as much control as possible, and the best way to maintain control is via in-housing. However, they may not have the required skills to in-house effectively." Let's rephrase this as a problem statement and then illustrate a straightforward solution theme: How should marketers go about maximizing control (ownership) and also push the trading buttons with confidence and competence (operations)?