Facebook's tepid disclosure last week that Russian operatives placed thousands of paid ads on the social network doesn't go far enough, because it is longer just a "social network." It's now a news broadcaster on the scale of CBS News in its heyday. And it should fall under the same regulatory oversight.

There are still numerous questions to be answered about the true disruptive power of blockchain technology in digital advertising - but the scale is tipping in favor of those who see a bright future for the emergent technology.

From a digital and brick-and-mortar perspective, overlaying first-party data with accurate, real-time location data enhances marketers' ability to serve appropriate creative and messaging at the right time and place.

Header bidding is now "synonymous" with programmatic advertising, claims PubMatic's Q2 Quarterly Mobile Index Report. The data appears to support this conclusion, as header bidding has seen triple-digit increases or greater in each geographic region studied.

Centro founder and CEO Shawn Riegsecker, an ad-tech exec who's thinking of running for the Senate in 2020, shared his thoughts on Zuckerberg's politically astute moves and the potential for tech candidates with RTBlog.

As header bidding matures and takes over from waterfall auctions, a number of other developments in the space can be expected. "Traditional ad servers were not built for a programmatic ecosystem, let alone one that operates across channels, devices and ad formats," according to Jeffrey K. Hirsch, CMO & head of U.S. publisher development at PubMatic. So the next step "needs to be unified ad serving."

The complexity of digital advertising requires more than current technological capabilities can handle at scale. Still, there's no doubt "the days of spending an entire day pulling and formatting reports from various systems and platforms are quickly coming to an end," according to Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker.

The CEOs of both Sizmek and Rocket Fuel respond to wide-ranging questions about the acquisition and what it means for the industry as a whole.

Beyond the way fake sites and fake clicks can take advantage of unsophisticated marketers in the overcrowded programmatic market, another industry has entered the fray: financial markets.

Blockchain technology is where ad tech may turn next to address many of the pesky problems that come with programmatic marketing. Using this disruptive technology, marketers may be able to take more control of ad delivery, verification, ensure safe and transparent data storage, and develop a counterweight to the centralized and opaque duopoly that is Facebook and Google.