If a young media trade journalist from the 80s were to wake up today and read about a white nationalist using a global network to broadcast a real-time massacre of innocent people in a place of worship, he'd probably say, "WTF." Coincidentally, that's the same thing an old media trade journalist would say today.

Even as parent WPP considers its long-term strategic position in the consumer research marketplace, its Kantar unit is rolling out a new interface aimed at on-demand enterprise users, as well as the long-tail. Dubbed Kantar Marketplace, the new platform effectively is a turnkey, on-demand research and insights store drawing from Kantar's massive historical data, as well as offering quick, agile surveys and polling for those looking for a quick turnaround to power their real-time marketing and media strategies.

British social media consultant Matt Navarra got some attention recently when he tweeted an animated, time-lapse visualization of the top brands' value changing in real-time over a 19 year period. The visualization was a powerful reminder about the value of looking at longitudinal change, but it also sparked a debate on Twitter about the underlying values the data represent.

The good news is that the Interactive Advertising Bureau's ads.txt initiative has seen remarkably fast compliance among the world's top website publishers doing business with big advertisers and ad agencies. The bad news is nothing's perfect.

I miss the days when I could just watch the Super Bowl, react to the ads and discuss them the next day around the water cooler instead of the real-time proboscopic breakdown analysis that the Big Ad Game has become. As I write this, my inbox already is getting flooded with numerous polls, "scientific" studies, and real-time metrics analysis purported to show what the best Super Bowl spots actually were. Personally, I found most of them underwhelming -- most likely because most have already been previewed in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl Sunday -- but also because they ...

Sometimes I think we get so caught up by the hype about how ad tech is, or will, transform advertising that we forget it is fundamentally is about tech.

This morning, I received a dispatch from Prague-based ad network and programmatic market operator R2B2, including an analysis of 2018's programmatic market activity based on its "RTB Index." I cannot begin to suggest the index is representative of other markets, especially the U.S. So take these findings with a relative grain of salt depending on what marketplace you operate in.

With economists once again uttering the "R" word, there has been surprisingly little discussion about how a new recession would impact the advertising marketplace. That's probably because historically, the ad industry lags going into economic recessions, But there is one segment of the industry that likely will feel an immediate impact -- so-called "ad tech" -- and maybe that won't be such a bad thing.

This week, the ad industry will take a major step toward so-called "omnichannel" integration as MediaMath rolls out a system with digital out-of-home platform Place Exchange that enables advertisers and agencies to buy desktop, mobile and digital out-of-home screens from a single dashboard.

As an homage to Netflix's debut of "Black Mirror Bandersnatch," today's "RTBlog" is an interactive version. All you need to do is click, scroll and use your eyes to determine where the narrative goes. And unlike "Bandersnatch," this blog can have multiple endings, created by you. All you have to do is post them in the comments field below.