While mobile video was one of the most buzzed-about topics at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that video will be the breakout star of 2016: "Video in 2016 will probably be as big a shift in the way people share and consume as mobile was in 2012... We’re at this turning point." Reporting from Mobile World Congress, Todd Wasserman said other topics at the show included the prospect of high-speed wireless data via 5G; virtual reality; screen-less mobile; and ad blocking. Yahoo’s VP of EMEA Nick Hugh warned carriers to be "cautious" about …

Data management platforms (DMPs). which help businesses aggregate marketing intelligence across channels, are falling short of marketers' expectations, according to a survey by Ad Age and Neustar. While more than half of the marketers surveyed use a DMP, nearly 28% don't use a DMP though they said they planned to do so within the next 12 months. More than 70% of the marketers surveyed that use DMPs expressed dismay over how DMPs integrated with their websites and mobile apps.

At Beet.TV's event in Vieques, Puerto Rico, attendees heard about The New York Times and other publishers embracing creative optimization of advertising formats. What exactly is this? Fiite, a creative management platform, says it can offer a view of a consumer's experience with an ad from the ground up. "So you take the creative and treat it like a little application and dynamically deliver the right experience for the consumer," according to Flite CEO and Co-Founder Giles Goodwin. “You have all this data so now you can customize the creative to the user’s experience with the ad,” Giles said. “So …

AdExchanger's Sarah Sluis reports on Facebook's Atlas' challenges in serving the market properly. When it launched nearly two years ago, Atlas promised to deliver marketers a better way to measure campaigns vs. DoubleClick, the market leader. While measurement is just one part of ad serving, marketers and agencies that have tested Atlas say that while it can measure across devices, the system has trouble serving ads across devices and formats. In addition, Sluis reports "marketers have problems dealing with Facebook’s data restrictions. Until the product improves, many are sticking it in 'testing' purgatory."

With ad fraud and non-human traffic a huge problem in the industry, TubeMogul said it will launch a Non-Human Traffic Credit Program, a sort of automatic "make good" on all video impressions it buys on the open exchange that have been identified as fake or fraudulent. To achieve this, it will license bot-detection technology from White Ops and layer its FraudSensor system into Tube's OpenRTB bid streams.

In a column on AdBlock Plus' blog, Ben Williams tries to explain the company's "Acceptable Ads" program for publishers. He says: "It's mega-important to understand that when websites or advertisers apply to be on the whitelist, the specific ads they want to whitelist must meet the Acceptable Ads criteria. There is no 'pay-to-play,' just as there are no exceptions." Williams invites readers to view all whitelisted partners and discuss specific whitelisted ads on its forum. He also encourages a read of how AdBlock plus monetizes. he takes pains to say "that only advertisers that stand to gain more …

In a column in AdExchanger, Operative CEO Lorne Brown argues that the promise of programmatic TV which allows advertisers to buy "what they want and allows media companies to sell what they have more quickly and seamlessly," won't be fulfilled unless the process is simplified. He calls out SpotXchange which lists eight different video delivery formats that each has their own terminology, metrics, data and technology as an example of how hard it is for traditional TV buyers to navigate the field. Brown argues: "Programmatic TV suffers from the same issue of almost every other feature of the ad tech …

TechCrunch has an interesting profile of Drawbridge which is looking beyond its identity as an ad tech company. In fact, Drawbridge has built technology to determine when the same person is using multiple devices. Cross-screen identity is a big deal as advertisers want to target the same person on multiple owned devices. The technology will enable data from one device to be used (in an anonymized way) to target ads on another. CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan told TechCrunch that over the last year or more, the company has also launched data licensing and software-as-a-service products for non-advertising customers. Sivaramakrishnan said the …

Forbes contributor Rachel Arthur imagines a world where "mundane repeat purchases and those easily solved by data insights, are automatically done for you." The phrase "programmatic commerce," she says, is defined by global commerce services firm Salmon as “Where consumers and businesses allow technology to make purchase decisions on their behalf based on pre-programmed parameters and learned preferences.” There are more than five billion devices connected to the internet and by 2020, Gartner IT projects this number to reach 20.7 billion. "The growth of intelligent data alongside, and consumers being more comfortable with their data being shared (especially millennials), all …

Adweek reports on a panel discussion during Mobile World Congress focusing on consumer data. Stephen Deadman, Facebook's global deputy chief privacy officer, said data-based ads ought to be more than just a "tax" on consumers. Deadman said Facebook is trying to pursue ways of providing ads on a more relevant and curated basis.But despite efforts to make data collection more transparent, panelists noted that even if people care about their data, "they don't care enough to waste hours of time managing data or researching privacy agreements." Amazon's Web Services Chief for EMEA Antonio Alvarez said: "Nobody wants to spend a …