An article posted by the New York Times contends that Mark Thompson, CEO of the NYT, is on the "hot seat" in 2015 as "digital and print news providers face crushing pressure from so-called programmatic sales, which lowers the yield on advertising; [and from] the switch to mobile, which is harder to make money from." The NYT had a programmatic ad director, Matt Prohaska, for a short time, before "eliminating" the job in 2014.

"Programmatic direct" ad trading had a big year in 2014, and AdExchanger has posted an article highlighting some of the most noteworthy headlines.

Bloomberg View has posted an article explaining how the Streisand effect played a part in the release of "The Interview." "Attempts at censorship often have an unintended consequence: The information gets more attention than it deserves," writes Bloomberg View.

At least online, robots have officially taken over. Yes, “bots” -- or programs that simulate human activity in the service of their creators -- now account for 56% of all of Website visits, Wired reports, citing data from online security services provider Incapsula. Among other purposes, “People use [bots] to buy gear on eBay and … to snag the best [restaurant] reservations,” according to Wired. “But, increasingly, a slice of these online bots are malicious -- used to knock websites offline, flood comment sections with spam, or scrape sites and reuse their content without authorization.”

"Hewlett-Packard is looking to take more control of its programmatic buying," reports Advertising Age.

AdExchanger has reported that Adelphic, a mobile demand-side platform (DSP), has raised $11 million in a Series B round of financing led by Blue Chip Venture Co., Google Ventures and Matrix Partners. The company has now received $12 million in total funding.

WPP GroupM's "advanced TV" unit, Modi, has partnered with programmatic ad platform Videology to "deliver television advertising to specific cable and satellite users in real-time, using programmatic ad decisioning technology," Jamie Power, senior partner at Modi, told Beet.TV in an interview.

Advertising Age has posted an article noting that despite the flurry of recent headlines regarding programmatic TV -- including ESPN's announcement that it would sell 30 seconds of "SportsCenter" ads via online auctions, TubeMogul's new self-serve programmatic TV platform and Cox's private programmatic TV marketplace with Magna Global -- "the industry remains a far sight from really seeing traditional, national TV breaks filled with ads bought via automated tech."

Advertising Age has reported that TripleLife, a native ad tech company, has integrated with programmatic ad platforms MediaMath, Turn, Triggit, AppNexus and The Trade Desk. The integrations will "allow ad buyers to purchase TripleLift's native ads" programmatically through those five ad platforms.

"Online marketplace eBay is to run an ad trading experiment next year which will see it cease all regular ad deals to focus solely on programmatically traded campaigns for one week," reports The Drum.