PMPs bring us closer to the vision of programmatic media: bidding on the right impression at the right place and time. Unfortunately, performance has been inconsistent. It's left some advertisers confused, asking, "Why doesn't my PMP work?" It's easy to get discouraged and give up on PMPs. But advertisers need to be diligent about managing PMP deals to make them successful.

In our ongoing push to improve the collective understanding of our industry, the financial markets are a cousin of sorts where we can draw useful similarities. Michael Lewis's book "The Flash Boys" can provide the latest signpost forward. The book centers on the complicated web of relationships in financial trading - a system in which investors didn't know where their orders were placed, or the mechanics of their ultimate executions. In our world of exchange-traded media, we also struggle with complexity. Buyers and sellers would argue that a sense of fair pricing is lost in the chain of intermediaries and …

Brick-and-mortar retailers, franchises, dealer associations and many other national marketers with localized marketing needs struggle with digital media - display and video in particular - because the trafficking and analytics challenges of managing hundreds, if not thousands, of small campaigns are too daunting to tackle. The emergence of programmatic technology platforms changes all of that. Programmatic creates operational efficiencies for local marketing organizations by automating thousands of individual efforts, allow companies to manage planning, campaign deployment, reporting and optimization centrally from a single platform, and tailored to meet market-specific needs.

Although we're only in Q2 of 2015, we're already seeing a trend take shape that will impact our industry like never before: scale. While much of our industry's recent history was built on the back of data, we're now seeing that it's not enough to have data unless you have data at scale. Those companies that don't have data at scale won't be able to reach new and existing customers in an effective manner. Here are a few topics marketers, publishers and agencies alike should consider as they begin to evaluate the world of scalable data:

Twitter's acquisition of TellApart reignited what's become a familiar narrative within the ad tech industry over the past year or so. It goes something like this: Twitter, Facebook and Google, in an attempt to create the most comprehensive marketing stacks possible, are scooping up tech providers and in some cases, restricting third-party access to their networks. This creates the impression of a "walled garden" model in which a few big players are perceived to control the vast majority of the digital marketing ecosystem, while small players are either squeezed out or bought up, thus stifling innovation. But this story isn't …

As publishers and advertisers scramble to improve the performance of digital advertising, much discussion is centering around the problem of viewability. It is my opinion that a major problem with impression-based performance metrics lies in the way that viewability is defined. I can see that for anyone steeped in the digital advertising ecosystem - from demand to supply and everyone in between - a viewability criterion of 50% of the ad visible for one second might make sense.

Richard III has been painted throughout history as a scheming, murderous wretch who backstabbed and connived his way to the English throne before dying in battle. After his remains were laid to rest in a manner befitting an English king, there was backlash from those who didn't believe Richard deserved such treatment. Programmatic advertising and real-time ad buying are facing a similar backlash. Publishers see data-driven approaches to digital marketing as attempts to replace humans with machines. Marketers, particularly on the creative end, say these approaches force out creative content in the name of efficiency.

Is there a more debated topic in advertising today than viewability? It reached a fever pitch at the recent IAB Leadership Forum, leading to even more heightened concerns for advertisers and publishers. But what's fueling this hysteria? And why now? Do we have a crisis on our hands? I think not. But it is indicative of how much our ad-tech capabilities have leapt forward and how quickly our business practices (both buy- and sell-side) need to catch up.