We've all seen the giant billboards that say "Your Ad Here."They represent the call of the media owner, broadcasting available space for advertisers to market their goods. In the old days, marketers would see that blank canvas and envision the ideal creative idea that would bring the space to life. Today, the world has changed. Advertising is no longer a case of "your" ad, as an advertiser, but "your" ad as in you, the consumer.

If content marketing is the biggest trend of the year, NewsCred is one of the biggest trendsetters. "Parts of our business actually mimic an ad exchange, except we are a content exchange," says Shafqat Islam, CEO and co-founder. NewsCred tracks the economics of content as it moves through the platform. "Will we actually be a real-time exchange for content?" asks Islam. "I don't know, but it's certainly something we are keeping an eye on."

It feels as if everyday there's a story in the trades with quotes from high-level agency staff questioning the viability of advertising technology. But for every column-inch spent debating, there's a dollar going to a company like Adap.tv after an acquisition from a major publisher. Investors are happy to funnel money into ad tech, but investors and advertisers have very different needs. It raises the question of what exactly all of this technology is supposed to do, and how effective it is for advertisers. For all the attention and media coverage, it would seem programmatic platforms are the most important …

I've always been an outspoken advocate for scalable native as the best possible vehicle for real-time branding. No secret there. Native that capitalizes on audience data, as well as the tone and context of surrounding content, practically assures branding success. BuzzFeed has become a leader in the native advertising space by both hosting innovative content-based units and by launching its own native advertising network.

DMEXCO, the annual digital marketing trade show in Cologne, Germany, was the perfect place to get out of the day-to-day and look at the big picture. I left having noticed three major changes since last year that I look forward to seeing develop in the next year:

Few people know more about the media consumption habits of America's affluent than Stephen Kraus, chief insights officer at Ipsos, a company with over 35 years experience tracking and predicting affluent behaviors. I was fortunate to discuss the company's recently published the Ipsos Affluent Survey USA with Kraus.

If there's one term that comes up frequently when talking about advertising technology, it's "confusion." The promise of investment has brought an influx of technology companies that claim to make business easier, but results in a fragmented, convoluted landscape.

With football season in full swing and the holidays just around the corner, I'd like to make a few predictions for the final quarter of 2013. Last year, real-time bidding was on the rise, with spending under $2 billion. But this year, it's estimated that U.S. advertisers will spend more than $3.36 billion on RTB, according to eMarketer. While the rapid growth will likely slow down a bit as the programmatic buying industry matures, it's predicted that RTB will account for more than 29% of all digital display spending by 2017.

As an industry, we spend every day opining on the value of Deal ID, the nomenclature of programmatic direct versus premium programmatic, the power of "Big Data" and the march towards all things that can be programmatic actually being programmatic. We pass inventory back and forth, applying our own secret sauce to make impressions more valuable. Along the way, we learn a little bit more about our counter-party in each transaction.

"And brands have had little use for programmatic buying and ad tech in general since it's all been primarily geared for direct-response sellers," according to a recent article. That may be true today, but it probably won't be for long. Sure, programmatic may have been created with DR in mind, but that doesn't mean it can't work for brands. Erin Matts, CMO of Annalect, points to Kellogg's, a brand reaping the benefits of (and evangelizing) programmatic.