I recently met with Benjamin Christie, founder and president of Gourmet Ads, a food advertising network with their own exchange. The Australia-based company has been using real-time bidding (RTB) technology for about a year and a half now, and have settled into a nice niche with food, grocery, and CPG clients. Christie and I talked at length about RTB, new programmatic technologies, the role of search and mobile, different regions, and where a food network can thrive. The conversation was interesting and a follow-up Q&A was in order. Take a look below to see Christie's thoughts on some hot topics …

I was recently invited to Centro's office to get a demo of their software meant to speed up media planning, which Online Media Daily covered back in March. Essentially, the software helps automate the request for proposal (RFP) stage. Online Media Daily wrote of the software: "...it claims [it] will automate many of the worst labor-intensive tasks done by agency media planners." They claimed. I went and saw. Seeing really is believing.

A real estate auction brand is holding an auction for the Ouray hotel both on-site and online via real-time bidding. However, something tells me that people won't be bidding on the hotel by using algorithms. Using automation comes down to quality and scale, and while this probably isn't news to any of you, I thought it provided a nice argument against premium inventory being bid on by algorithms.

Today, we are bringing you a special edition of RTBlog. Not only was the below interview conducted by a guest writer, Rob Garner, but the subject of the interview is the father of real-time himself, Regis McKenna. In the below email interview, Garner asked McKenna to weigh in on contemporary real-time marketing, picked his brain on the now famous 2013 Oreo Super Bowl ad, and had him explain the relationship between social media and real-time marketing. You might want to listen up.

As you read this, I will be somewhere between Yosemite and Mt. Whitney in the High Sierras, thruhiking the John Muir Trail with my daughter Zoe. And frankly, I can't think of any time more real than that. The reason I am posting this is not to tell you how I'm spending my summer vacation, but because it relates to the two underlying themes I have tried to focus on since we started posting on RTBlog: What is real and what is time.

We use our five senses - sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste - all in real-time, and often subconsciously, so why not let our sixth (tech-driven) sense work the same way? My6sense, a "native mobile content personalization" company focused on helping publishers, is all about offering users that sixth sense. When it comes right down to it, ad technology is not only providing publishers and advertisers with better tools, but it's making user experiences all the more enjoyable. After all, if the tech ruined the user experience, there would be no more users.

It's one of those seasoned trade journalist/blogger confession times: I am not as smart as you think. Fortunately, a lot of the people I get to talk to are. And one of them is Frank Addante, the founder and CEO of Rubicon Project. If you read the story I wrote today based on some important insights about critical flaws in the RTB market's bidding infrastructure, you will understand why. At least I hope you do. It took me awhile to understand it before I could write it. It took several conversations with Addante and some consultation with Rubicon's Chief Scientist …

Earlier this week, Varick Media named Sandie Milberg as senior vice president, platform sales. RTM Daily spoke with Milberg this afternoon about her new role, what her short- and long-term goals are, technology in general, and how a trade desk really fits in with programmatic buying. RTM Daily: Why did you take the roll? Sandie Milberg: First off, I think the pace of media going programmatic is increasing rapidly. Previously working at an ad network and working with exchanges, I've always thought, being on sales-side, that small and middle sized agencies don't have the backing that these large agencies have …

Long story short: FBX hasn't gone away, and it's only getting bigger and better. Just today, Adara, a big data company focused on targeting traveler audiences, announced that it now participates on FBX. Does a company like Adara hold the blueprints for the perfect FBX campaign? Can they get the right mix of people that have looked at a certain destination, a mix of people that have booked it, a mix of people that have already been, and get all of them talking about it? That doesn't just seem great for the advertisers, it seems great for the consumers too.

If you're old school like me, you are no doubt familiar with the "five Ps of marketing." If you're not familiar with them, don't worry, they're ancient history and are about to be replaced by the "five Vs," according to a compelling new report from aptly name Big Data firm Teradata. The five Vs, according to the report, "Be A Big Data Marketing Hero," are volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value. While they're all important, and deserving of blog posts of their own, I'd like to focus on the concept of velocity, because of the real-time implications associated with accelerating …