Not enough publishers have a strong awareness of header bidding, and there is much misinformation about its limitations and how it works.

Programmatic and display advertising contribute to the increase in the amount marketers will spend on data, according to the report.

Survata's first president of research, Dyna Boen, finds "onlyness" one of the strongest links to success. The word, which comes from the title of a book she is reading called "The Power of Onlyness" by Nilofer Merchant, refers to a person's unique qualities. This entrepreneur and strategist says businesses and individuals have these unique qualities. You just need to bring them out.

Data supported by artificial intelligence has become an essential part of campaigns, yet marketers still struggle to deliver better experiences for consumers. One reason for integrating data with AI is to reduce the time it takes to find the nuances within the data, but executives agree there are gaps in technology that fail to connect data and provide one view of a consumer record that includes their likes and dislikes.

PebblePost, which created programmatic direct mail, recently closed a $25 million series C funding round led by Advance Venture Partners (AVP).

The model analyzes "attribute density" in a new way to identify the type of consumers the campaign reaches, and then measure the return on investment on those people who buy a product or service. "There's probably a million data segments, so we cannot measure them all overnight," McConnell said. "But we think that if data's the problem, data quality is the next frontier of marketing."

Before launching a campaign, marketers need to determine whether it should target a household or individual. When audience data ties to the household, it becomes the primary focus.

A recently released platform takes metrics and tracking to another level. This time it's about tracking interactions within the playable ad, known as a mini-game.

Implementing transparency, consistency and universal standards are the top three actions that marketers would like from data providers to improve data quality, according to a recent study commissioned by data management platform Lotame.

Liberdy, a blockchain-based company building a platform that works like a data exchange, wants to turn the advertising model on its head. It wants consumers not only to be more responsible for data -- but will pay them for its use.