WPP's CEO Sir Martin Sorrell thinks the in-house programmatic trend may be "overblown," according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. His comments were made during a Q4 earnings call on Friday.   He said marketers are finding it hard to sustain in-house programmatic efforts, with "challenges retaining talent and investing in the necessary technology."

Great story by Venturebeat on the how ad blockers are leading game developers to find other ways to get players -- including collaborating with Roostr.tv, "a marketplace where developers can pay YouTubers to make content featuring their mobile games. Each Roostr.tv partner gets a unique link as part of their advertising campaigns, and they get paid a set amount for each person who installs the game using that link. For developers, this creates a way to avoid paying $4.23 on average for a new player that may not spend a lot — or anything — on their game. That’s a record high rate, according …

Glen Calvert, CEO of Affectv ponders the question. But what is programmatic creative? "Programmatic creative is the enabling of intelligent creative, where each person is exposed to a brand’s message that adapts, changes and is personalized to them, regardless of the device or site they’re on. Programmatic creative enables the content of an ad to be programmatically manipulated so it’s more relevant and personal to the person it’s being served to, with a continuous feedback loop for optimization," Calvert writes. Neither traditional, nor digital creative shops, are prepared for this yet -- but they should be.

Writing for the Native Advertising Institute's blog, Kelly Rogan, international business developer and marketing strategist at Cyberclick, says that the solution for ad blocking is simple: "adaption and creativity." Since there are nearly 200 million users of ad-blocking software, Rogan says it's preposterous to think that anyone or any company can stop people from using the software. "Advertisers must adapt to the trend" and explore their options apart from intrusive forms of advertising. Of course, she suggests native advertising as an option, though even native ads can be hidden by ad blockers.  She argues that …

It won't be the same old Deloitte at SxSW this week in Austin. Adweek's Lauren Johnson reports that fresh off its acquisition of S.F.-based digital creative shop Heat, Deloitte will begin pitching brand marketers on its new business model that combines digital and data services with creative solutions. Deloitte Digital's CMO Alicia Hatch told Adweek: "Some of our competitors have acquired creative shops, but it's more about building digital shops." Deloitte competitors IBM, PwC and Accenture have also been injecting creative into their service offerings in order to compete with digital agencies. IBM has been on a tear acquiring three …

Research from Rocket Fuel via eMarketer indicates that marketers will place their bets and spending on marketing tech and programmatic media this year. The December survey found that 24% of respondents said they planned to buy media programmatically in 2016, an increase of 11% over 2015. More than 90% of respondents said that DMPs, which help marketers aggregate information and data across channels were "very" or "somewhat interesting" technology to learn about in 2016. The survey found that 80% of respondents were interesting in learning about programmatic TV in 2016.

AdExchanger's Ryan Joe has a revealing conversation with Xaxis Global CEO Brian Gleason. Joe documents that "the ad net/trading desk/tech shop combo invests a lot into its own data, partnerships and technologies." For example, in 2014, it invested $25 million in Turbine, its proprietary data management platform and Joe cites the $25 million stake WPP took in AppNexus, which gave Xaxis access to the former’s ad server, Open Adstream. Gleason documents that Xaxis last year upped its headcount to 1,200 and overall billings to $1 billion. Meanwhile, Gleason said Xaxis plans to invest $54 million in its platform focusing on …

AT&T announced on Thursday the launch of a private marketplace dubbed the Video Inventory Platform (VIP). AT&T will partner with Videology on the tech platform. Jason Brown, AT&T AdWorks’ VP of national advertising sales, told AdExchanger that VIP is a “data-optimized TV and video planning tool." It will be available in Q3 and will enable advertisers to programmatically purchase linear inventory from AT&T U-verse and DirecTV. VIP is one of the first major ad products AT&T has released since its $49 billion merger last year with DirecTV.

Business Insider reports that WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell on Friday said that if Verizon-owned AOL swooped to buy Yahoo, the merged company could become the advertising holding group's third-biggest internet advertising investment. Yahoo's board is currently exploring "strategic alternatives" to spinning off its core business that include a sale. Parties interested in buying Yahoo are: Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and private equity players like Bain Capital, KKR and TPG, according to Bloomberg. During WPP's Q4 earnings presentation, Sorrell explained that WPP spent (on behalf of its clients) $430 million on advertising with Yahoo in 2015.

The Wall Street Journal reports that despite concerns over fraud and transparency, marketers are flocking to programmatic media. That's according to a study conducted by the ANA and Forrester which found that marketers' use of programmatic media buying and planning has more than doubled in the last two years as they seek to improve customer targeting. The study showed that 79% of marketers made programmatic buys over the last year. Research firm eMarketer estimates programmatic ad spending in the U.S. will grow 39.7% in 2016 to $21.55 billion.