On the phone the other day trying to advance a local programmatic TV negotiation, I queried the vendor on whether there was a transactional fee for its service. Some platforms, like Videa, pass the fee onto the TV station or publisher; others, like Comcast's Audience Plus, offer all-inclusive gross packages, e.g., inventory, transactional costs and posting. Understanding and accepting that we were engaging in digital modeling, of course there would be an ad-serving fee. No problem. Gross or net? Silence.

The audiences watching TV and digital video are (mostly) the same, so why not use the same data to reach them in both places? That's exactly what more and more marketers are doing.

For a small agency working with a small budget, programmatic TV placements let the client fight above its weight in prime-time arenas it never could afford before.

Here's a projection to put things into perspective: IPG Mediabrands' Magna Global recently predicted that U.S. marketers will spend $10 billion of their TV ad budgets through programmatic channels by 2019 -- including both audience-buying and household addressable.