What is real-time marketing? According to the opening panel at the Brand Marketers Summit in Kohler, Wisc., this morning, it's all about listening to the conversation and being able to react to it -- in real-time, or as close as you can get to it. "Real-time marketing means marketing at the speed of culture and being plugged in and monitoring it real-time," explained Scott Carlis, VP Digital and Social Media, AEG Global Partnerships.

When you start typing in a search online, you know how the engine's algorithm offers completion suggestions before you are even done? I've always thought they were legitimate, but now I'm starting to think that there is some tinkering that goes on behind the scenes. Google searches autosuggest that the Xbox One is "terrible." Bing's suggestions? Nothing but "amazing."

There's some encouraging news about the next generation of media consumers in some new research released this week by MTV. The research, which is part of an ongoing series of studies on the media habits, attitudes and behaviors of Millennials, breaks the generation down into two sub-groups: older ones who are 18-plus, and younger ones ages 14 to 17. Why is this of interest to readers of RTBlog? Because the media habits of the younger ones (which MTV dubs New Millennials) are markedly different in terms of how and when they consume media. Yes, they are as real-time connected as …

Portuguese travel. RVs. Graduate Degrees. What could these three things possibly have in common? According to ChoiceStream's June Audience Cost Calendar (which is actually data from May), these three segments were among the highest risers as compared to April. As more bidders enter the real-time bidding (RTB) space, competition heats up and the prices for high demand segments are driven up.

If you're like me, then you believe that one of the unintended consequences of the hyper-acceleration of real-time media are some corresponding attention disorders, including ADHD. Now, according to at least one popular media research source, it is now a media planning attribute. Or at the very least, a new form of audience segmentation being used by TV programmers and advertisers to target social TV users. Speaking during Maxxcom's first global media collaborative in New York last week, Trendrr Co-Founder and CEO Mark Ghuneim, said the company now breaks social TV users down into segments known ad "Hyperactives" and "Massive …

In the automated space, we often hear the term "programmatic direct." We hear about how real-time bidding (RTB) has a low ceiling because it's associated with remnant inventory, and that programmatic direct is how the cool kids trade. I was at Tech For Direct last week where speakers happily displayed charts showing that programmatic direct would bring in piles of cash to the moon and back, sucking the money from RTB's measly spend predictions. One problem though...it seems to me that everyone trying to sell the idea of programmatic direct is actually a middle man.

I've had a couple of meetings with some ad technology leaders in the past couple of days that are starting to make me think that what's old in Madison Avenue media departments is new again with the tech crowd. Specifically, the way they are thinking about the structure of the business. It hit me first when I had a catch-up the other day with Aggregate Knowledge President Rob Gatto, and it hit me again today after meeting with Adly CEO Walter Delph. Both of them outline a business structure that begins with using data to target consumers, then implementing it, …

Jason Barnes, head of commercial development at News Limited, spoke with RTM Daily to let us know why News Limited went the programmatic route, challenges they've encountered in terms of ad sales teams mixing with ad sales tech, and where he sees RTB going in the future for everyone involved. News Limited is one of Australia's largest media companies with assets in subscription television, Web sites, magazines, and newspapers. The News Corporation company also happens to be involved with real-time bidding (RTB).

On the one hand, I think that native advertising is real-timey (even if the impression wasn't bought on an exchange) because if the ad blends with the surrounding content well, the user "consumes" the ad in a different, natural, and real-time way. So to me, native advertising done well counts as real-time from the consumer point of view.

Most agency trading desks boast about their real-time trading capabilities, but GroupM's Xaxis now literally trades throughout the day, thanks to a global expansion that has given it coverage across the planet. "Everywhere WPP is developing, Xaxis will be in that market, as well," Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser vowed during a presentation at WPP's Digital Day last week. Xaxis already trades in 22 global markets, is represented in every major region with the exception of the Middle East and Africa, which are coming soon, he said.