Programmatic advertising is set to grow significantly in the coming year as inventory becomes more available in the open exchange, especially native ad units, but it seems marketers still lack the ability to leverage the data. The most notable disconnect points to the gap between data and technology, though artificial intelligence continues to try and bridge it.

It's becoming increasingly harder to make intelligent media-buying decisions when using emerging technologies like blockchain and programmatic. While technologies like these move the advertising industry forward, some insiders believe that many marketers lack the knowledge to support this growth.

The need for more efficient ad targeting with increased transparency began to attract marketers to the use of programmatic engines, but a recent study spearheaded by the CMO Council shows few have adopted the technology.

When combining aggregated data from moving devices with an index built by Ubimo, marketers can better understand human behavior.

Israel has become a hotbed for artificial intelligence, integrating AI with data and a variety of platforms such as search, email and programmatic to support advertisers. My6sense, a medium-sized company based in Israel with about 20 engineers and software developers, monitors about 1 trillion transactions daily, according to Avinoam Rubinstain, the company's CEO.

Predicting anomalies in real-time data with help from artificial intelligence is great, but the real Holy Grail is the ability to predict two weeks or more in advance to determine the real price of an advertisement or how much inventory a brand will need in a specific area based on sales generated by ads.

Brands want to know where, when and how often their competitors' ads run. And they want to tie the information to the way they buy media using a variety of data. These are issues engineers at Kantar Media have been working hard to solve, said Manish Bhatia, CEO of North America at Kantar Media, a WPP company.

Another data war is emerging, centered on voice-activated conversation user interfaces that will drive data signals. This technology will have implications for strategies -- especially for Wal-Mart and Amazon, two early adopters.

Paul Donato, recently appointed to ARF chief research officer to spearhead changes, will help focus on initiatives like managing twenty-first century data. The step focuses on moving the ARF back to its roots as an organization doing more research on key industry issues. Data being a key focus for at least the near term.

Not enough marketers pay attention to blockchain technology. They should. It will become the next advancement in fraud prevention while serving online advertisements. Companies such as Intel, Microsoft and MetaX are working on solutions.