In today's connected device world, we are seeing a fundamental change in the way consumers engage with digital content. Most users do not consume content, perform actions, engage, or convert on smartphones the same way they do on a desktop or tablet. Therefore, meaningful marketing to a modern user requires effective cross-device campaigns.

According to the October 2013 report from Magna Global, it's estimated that worldwide programmatic ad spending and RTB will hit $12 billion this year. The growth in RTB is mostly driven by the ability for marketers to segment their audiences and target them effectively using all types of data from site visits to CRM and search data. When you apply automated buying and data to the actual creative, the message becomes extremely relevant to the end user, and, in many cases, will differ from consumer to consumer. Changing the creative elements of an ad is most commonly referred to as …

Big data continues to garner attention, and third-party data vendors in particular have enjoyed celebrity success these past few years due to advances with third-party cookies. But the increasing mobile consumption across multiple devices, most of which do not utilize cookies, combined with a renewed interest in privacy, are bringing a multitude of challenges to third-party providers. To avert the increasing challenges of working with these vendors, digital marketers are activating first-party data and finding opportunity to engage consumers in more transparent, meaningful ways.

WPP had three wins in the first half of the year. The first win was the merger of 24/7 Real Media and Xaxis, which gave WPP the largest trading desk in the world, with more engineers, platforms and direct publisher relationships than anyone else. WPP's second win was the failed merger between Publicis and Omnicom, ensuring that WPP is still the largest agency holding group. The third big win may not be as well known, but it may be the most important: the creation of Mindshare's The Loop.

The recent article "The Coming Subprime Advertising Crisis" points out flaws within the advertising industry as it evolves. While there are core elements of the advertising ecosystem that need to be addressed to ensure that we deliver value in the ecosystem, we cannot blame programmatic media or data-driven targeting. On the contrary, programmatic media and data-driven targeting are part of the solution, and key parts of a well-oiled advertising algorithm. They are NOT the problem.

The online ad industry has been battling issues of transparency for most of its existence and adoption of programmatic media sales has only fueled the debate. Fewer than one quarter of client-side marketers understand programmatic and use it in campaigns, while 42% feel that concerns over transparency have increased in the past year, according to a recent survey by the ANA and Forrester. Advertisers have a right to be concerned, as less of their budget is going toward ads that are actually shown to the target audience, in a suitable environment and the right number of times.