I was invited to watch a Festival of Media Global 2013 panel called "Algorithm Versus Man" via a Google+ Hangout, but unfortunately the panel time was changed while I was still asleep here in the United States. A week later, the panel was made available to me via Dropbox. So much for being able to watch in real-time with today's technology. Oddly enough, what today's technology is truly capable of was a major focus on the panel.

Is it just me, or are the lines between buyer and seller blurring in the programmatic marketplace? First Rubicon Project goes fully neutral, launching a spate of products aimed at the demand-side. Now a major agency trading desk is planning to diversify its services to the sell-side.

Programmatic marketing solutions provider DataXu today released its Consumer Index, a new quarterly report on cross-market consumer behavior trends and purchasing patterns. DataXu claims the inaugural report looks at data from "hundreds of advertisers and millions of consumers" from three industries: automotive, retail, and financial services. The data in the report comes from the United States, and the report asks what consumers in each industry typically do for a living, what kind of content they consume, and even what kind of food they eat. Some of the findings weren't too surprising. For example, real estate, finance, and insurance professionals were …

According to data from Rubicon Project's real-time marketplace app, the real-time advertising space grew for the second straight month. As far as data about real-time advertising goes, this information did not even come close to being available in real-time (it's March 2013 data). Regardless, it gives solid insight into the real-time marketplace both globally and in the United States. In the U.S., there was a 29% increase in spend in March compared to February. There was also a whopping 34% increase in impressions, while eCPM dropped 4%. Globally, spend was up 30%. Impressions (27%) and eCPM (2%) were also up.

When we launched this column some months ago, I explained our mission by citing examples of innovative real-time marketing being developed by agencies --not just in reaching audiences -- but in telling them stories. One of them was Digitas' "BrandLive" initiative, which created a real-time "newsroom" for clients such as Procter & Gamble. And in that real-time spirit, I can tell you that even as you read this blog, Arianna Huffington is standing on a Manhattan stage telling a roomful of advertisers and agencies about a new "brand as newsroom solution" The Huffington Post has developed exclusively for Digitas' BrandLive. …

There are several problems with hashtags, the least of which is how downright annoying they can be. The real problem for marketers is that hashtags - and similar word-specific compiling technologies on Twitter - don't recognize if a brand logo pops up in an image. According to LTU Technologies, 36% of all links shared on Twitter are images. What's more, 77% of brand images are shared without the all-important hashtag or text reference - just a link to an image. Even the most popular tweet ever, notching over 800,000 retweets, is an image. Stephen Shepherd, general manager of LTU, told …

There's some revealing language in a status update released by Rubicon Project today that signals its shift from a sell-side to a demand-side -- or at the very least -- a neutral platform. And it comes from none other than CEO and Founder Frank Addante, who while explaining the spectacular growth of its REVV real-time ad trading platform, gave top billing to the buy-side. "Our momentum stems from the fact that Rubicon Project is solving the biggest problem in digital advertising today -- making it easier for advertisers and publishers around the globe to buy and sell digital advertising," he …

Some interesting shifts are taking place in the whole paid vs. earned/owned media business that have some big implications for the paid part. You know, advertising. First I got briefed on an important milestone story that I reported on today that VivaKi had locked up a new, powerful platform that will give it the ability to strategically plan earned media with the same scientific rigor as paid media (see related story in today's RTM Daily). In other words, the VivaKi shops -- and their clients -- now have the ability know reasonably well how much money they don't have to …

Machines have helped make the buying and selling of inventory easier, but when they are told to buy and sell fraudulent inventory, a lot of money ends up stolen and or lost. New research from Solve Media shows that on 2013's current path, advertisers could lose more than $3 billion online and up to $1 billion in mobile due to ad fraud. In addition to ghost sites, publishers and advertisers also need to be wary of bots that provide fraudulent clicks and impressions to boost sites up in indexing tools such as comScore. Ari Jacoby, Solve Media's CEO, spoke with …

Programmatic media-buying may have a reputation for being performance driven, but an informal survey of agency and marketer executives indicates that may not be their primary goal. To find out what's really driving the programmatic marketplace, Netmining recently surveyed 131 agency and client execs and found "engagement metrics" was the No. 1 criteria, cited by 73% of the respondents.