It takes 0.36 seconds for a browser to display the winning bidder's ad in an exchange-based environment starting from the time a user goes to a URL. Here is the entire timeline of the ad's life, per Turn, and a few recent iconic Olympic moments that would have been wildly different had individuals been just 0.36 seconds slower.

Ever have one of those moments when it feels like time is slowing down? I had one yesterday when I asked a group of big advertisers what I thought was a simple question. It was followed by a long, awkward pause, a bit of stammering, and then some answers. They just didn't happen to be answers to the question I asked.

Is Big Data crushing the cookie, or is multichannel marketing? Is there even a difference? RTM Daily speaks with Daniella Harkins, director of digital strategy and support at Acxiom, to find out more about why a crumbling cookie matters to real-time marketers and programmatic traders, what the relationship is between cookies, Big Data, and automation, and more.

The final panel at the Video Insider Summit this weekend explored the topic of programmatic video buying in 2014. To kick things off, MediaPost's Gavin O'Malley, the panel moderator, predicted that in 2014, panels on programmatic won't be left to the end of conferences. "It will be taking over," he quipped. One of the most interesting conversations that unfolded from the panel - which included Varick Media's Keith Gooberman, Videohub's Chris Klopp, BrightRoll's Lucas Krump, and LiveRail's Troels Smit - was the mixed topic of transparency, viewability, standards, and the role of the buyers and sellers in figuring it all …

A panel at this morning's MediaPost Video Insider Summit explored the topics of automation and customization in video, asking if the two could coexist. Joe Mandese, MediaPost's Editor-in-Chief, was moderating the panel and shared an industry concern, asking if "we are getting so personalized and so about the individual [that] we are losing the collective tissue." The topic was a timely one for me, because it closely related to a conversation I had last week with Eric Frankel, CEO of Stargreetz, a video personalization platform for advertisers. Frankel was previously President of Warner Bros. TV and an exec there for …

If you look through old articles and posts about programmatic media-buying, I'm willing to bet one of the most common phrases in each of those pieces is "the future." Just a quick search on MediaPost for articles containing the phrase "the future" and the word "programmatic" spits out seven pages of results, five and a half of which are from 2013. Programmatic trading has been destined for the future, but at some point, the future becomes the now. Are we at that point?

I once tried to describe the programmatic ecosystem to a non-advertiser by way of a diagram. We were at a table, so I used tableware to lay it out: forks, spoons, knives, napkins, plates, bowls, cups, and even salt and pepper shakers. It's a good thing there are so many different utensils, too, because I used nearly all of them. I wasn't even halfway through my makeshift diagram when I realized it was too confusing. The person I was explaining it to got the gist of it - automating the trading process - but I think it was a good …

Arriving fashionability late - or, rather, not being invited until the party had been going on for awhile - Google will soon be able to offer its clients easy access to inventory available for real-time bidding (RTB) on the Facebook Exchange (FBX). When Google announced the partnership, my first thought was that it would cause prices on FBX to shoot upward. While a recent report from Turn shows that the prices on FBX are already on the up and up (eCPM is up 87% year to date), it's still relatively cheap. The eCPM of all Facebook ads was $0.45 in …

When recent data came out saying that negative news cycles decrease competition in exchange-based marketplaces, my first thought was that automation, despite all its coolness, does not yet reign supreme. People tout its abilities, but in the end humans still make the call, such as not advertising when negative real world events are happening. "The humans are still proving to be valuable in this automated world," Andrew Casale, vice president of strategy at Casale Media, said. "Hopefully they will continue to be." That's one example of how perception - or at least hype - might not be reality. But I …

In what could be described as the programmatic audience-buying marketplace's Big Bang moment, a team of young Internet entrepreneurs led by Scott and John Ferber set out 15 years ago to organize the rapidly expanding universe of unsold audience impressions for advertisers. Their baby, Advertising.com proved to be the first scalable and sustainable online advertising network, and paved the way for an explosion of ad tech players -- exchanges, DSPs, DMPs, and trading desks -- that have created the modern day programmatic marketplace. On the eve of that anniversary, one RTM Daily asked Dave Jacobs, senior vice president-publisher services of …