• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, October 3, 2014

The industry will find a way to fix itself.

That idea was an essential theme at OMMA RTB during Advertising Week in New York on Thursday, though a more apt thought may be that the industry will find a way to evolve, because in order to fix something, it must first be broken. And whether or not something is broken in the programmatic ad space right now depends on who you ask.

The first time the "industry will evolve naturally" idea cropped up was during a conversation about the growing trend of brands taking programmatic technologies in-house.

The panelists were in general agreement, with Kevin Rettig, senior manager of global media management at Accenture, leading the way with this conviction, that the desire for more transparency -- "how is my money actually being spent?" -- is a key catalyst behind the shift to in-house programmatic teams.

Andrew Casale, VP of strategy at Casale Media, believes that "he problem will self-correct.” However, the notion of an evolving industry is not exclusive to the advertising industry, as Casale pointed out. “If you run a business, and your clients are telling you they want something, and you aren’t giving it to them, at some point they are going to go somewhere.” 

The idea of an evolving industry arose, though less overtly, on a second panel during the conference. Speaking on a panel about the "flight to quality" in the programmatic ad space, Rob Master, VP of media at Unilever, said that Unilever hasn't seen quality inventory, at the scale it desires, in the open RTB (real-time bidding) marketplaces.

As a result, Unilever has turned to private marketplaces. But Master indicated that if the open RTB exchanges were to provide higher quality inventory at more scale, Unilever’s return to the open marketplace wouldn't be out of the question. In other words, the company is keeping its evolution options open.