Marketers struggling to quantify the impact of mobile ads now have new technology to help. "Medialets is plugging its ad-targeting technology into Millward Brown Digital's... brand-lift studies," writes Lauren Johnson in Adweek. "After serving a mobile ad, advertisers can run a study to find out if people remember it." So far, "five marketers—including automotive, consumer-packaged goods, beverage and financial brands—have tested the new data tools."

Publishers used programmatic in a variety of ways in 2015 -- from experimenting with it for print, as Time Inc. did, to embracing private marketplaces. In this post, Ad Exchanger describes 10 ways publishers "are tackling the upsides and blocking the downsides of programmatic."

Execs from The Rubicon Project Latin America, MediaMath Brazil, comScore Brazil, DynAdmic Brazil, TubeMogul Brasil and IgnitionOne Brazil weigh in on their expectations for 2016. “There is a unique characteristic of the Brazilian market: companies want to do all, aiming for more revenues," said Marcelo Sant’Iago, country manager, MediaMath Brazil. "It will be hard for the market to grow in a scalable way if each player doesn’t get clearly which are their spaces and their technical capabilities as a differential."

Will Proops, global head of revenue, Axonix, talks about mobile programmatic for NetImperative. Programmatic growth in Asia, engaging with consumers and easy purchasing capabilities are a few topics Proops discusses. "Ultimately, 2016 is going to continue to be all about mobile," Proops says, "but it’s also going to be geared towards impressive, yet simple consumer experiences – and making sure they aren’t irritated in any way on their journey to make a purchase."

Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion; British agency conglomerate WPP bought Medialets and The Exchange Lab; and Twitter bought TellApart for $532.6 million. See AdExchanger's list of important M&A activity that happened in 2015.

Amit Ahuja, general manager-data management, Adobe Marketing Cloud talks about the value of strategic data partnerships, as well as the challenges publishers face with the rise of ad blockers and programmatic advertising. "Publishers have to look beyond ad inventory as their primary asset," Ahuja says in the editorial. "Why don't they understand the value of their data and act on that value?"

As cross-device usage increases, the Internet of Things accelerates and traditional media spend moves toward digital, digital media's language problem is bound to worsen, contends AdExchanger in a post by Ephraim (Jeff) Bander, president and chief revenue officer at Sticky. "To avoid further entangling ourselves," Bander says, "defining a proper framework behind brands’ goals and objectives and ensuring alignment among an expanding infrastructure of people need to come first."

Havas Media Group programmatic solutions head Hossein Houssaini talks to Beet.TV about audio ads, dynamic advertising and working with creative agencies. Houssaini talks about the challenges of integrating new tech -- including translating the message to creative agencies. One solution is building a data team that speaks the language of the digital media world and the creative world, which Havas is trying out. "This is a mandatory project for us to see how these worlds work together and how we can offer a full package," he said. Additionally, Houssaini talks about tailoring audio ads based on the emotion of the music someone listens …

If you're still identifying millennials simply by age, you're missing out on an opportunity to address where a consumer is in the funnel, as well as what you know about him or her based on expressed interests and previous purchases, says Eddie de Guia, managing director and co-founder of PubNative. De Gula thinks it's time to stop buying audiences and start buying individual users. Once you personalize ads, he says, you're telling the millennial user you're done with typecasting.

AdExchanger's Allison Schiff writes of the "disconnect" between consumers and ad tech vendors when talking about cross-device tracking:  "Consumers use words like 'non-court ordered surveillance' and 'insidious invasion of privacy,' while vendors and ad industry trade groups refer to 'innovation in ad tech,' driving 'the Internet economic engine' and delivering a 'seamless digital experience.'” Consumer comments were solicited by the FTC prior to a workshop the commission held on cross-device tracking.