One of the most important things I've learned in the time we've been publishing RTM Daily is there is no such thing as "real-time." The reality is that time is relative, and quite often, asynchronous depending on who -- or as the case may be -- what is applying it. The who, of course, is people. The what, increasingly, is machines. And the more machines speed up the way in which people process time, the nuttier we humans seem to get. That's one of the reasons I was happy to see Varick Media Management has published "Man + Machine," a …

It's been one month since Oreo brought the term "real-time marketing" into the limelight, but the Huffington Post believes that its 15 minutes of fame could already be over. Real-time marketing has been around since brands have existed in one way or another. But the Huffington Post article, and this RTBlog, speaks of real-time marketing in the context of using Twitter to promote brands during real-time events, like the Super Bowl or the Oscars. In this context, burying "real-time marketing" after an underwhelming display by brands at the Oscars would be jumping the gun. A Convince and Convert article from …

It's not quite at the "I, Robot" level (yet), but the humans vs. machines debate is both popular and important. The three-martini lunch might exclusively belong in episodes of Mad Men nowadays, but where is all of the automation driving one-on-one relationships between publishers and advertisers? Yesterday's Quote Of The Day touched on the subject of the human's role in advertising. It said, "'There's always the art piece to it. There's always the intuitive piece. I worry about the science becoming too much of a focus. The balance has gotten out of kilter.' -- WPP Chief Martin Sorrell responding to …

Fresh off his centimillion dollar deal to sell Current TV to Al Jazeera, Al Gore once again turning his attention to the Internet. And once again, it's to help educate people about climate change. The effort, dubbed "Reality Drop," incorporate online social media, a "news-driven digital platform" and a "sophisticated algorithm" intended to reinvigorate the global debate surrounding climate change.

This week, the Rubicon Project released an infographic representative of mobile RTB according to major European trading desks. Josh Wexler, Rubicon's GM, mobile, and Jay Stevens, the Rubicon's GM, International, both attended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, where the infographic was released. The two shed some light on the state of mobile RTB in Europe with RTM Daily. The infographic depicting the findings from the European trading desks can be found here or at the bottom of the page. Rubicon gathered information from 25 of Europe's top trading desks, including 12 from the UK, and Wexler said their …

Remember the piece we published a few weeks ago on Advertiser Perceptions Inc.'s findings that there is still a lack of awareness and unfamiliarity around some real-time advertising services, especially agency trading desks? Well that was the bad news. The good news is that there is a tremendous amount of optimism among ad executives planning to increase their spending through such technologies.

Twitter this week announced its Twitter Ads API, which opens the door for advertising to expand on the social media site. In addition, Twitter hopes the Ads API will push their annual revenue from 9 figures to 10, according to Brian Wieser, CFA, senior research analyst, Pivotal Research Group. Everything on Twitter happens in real-time, but marketers have been unable to take full advantage of the millions of "Tweeters" quite yet. The lack of an API has not been solely responsible for this, but Wieser believes Twitter will now be able to offer similar ad campaign management to Facebook, which …

One of the reasons I wanted to edit RTM Daily and write RTBlog is to do the deep dive into all this geeky technology that's transforming our industry (and society), but even I wasn't prepared for the conversation that took place Wednesday afternoon on the West Side of Manhattan where Rubicon Project held its New York Summit updating the industry on some new bells and whistles and, well, algorithms. In fact, those mathematical programs were the real stars of the event, even though Rubicon brought some pretty big industry execs on stage, and surrounded the audience with some sci-fi looking …

As far as media events go, there probably hasn't been one more real-time than Super Bowl XLVII, which included a number of media firsts, including the ability of viewers to watch the action of all 22 NFL players on the field at the same time, on a single screen. The technology, which the NFL aptly named the "All 22" camera angle, previously was only available to NFL teams after a game, so they could conduct their own post-game analysis. But thanks to the insistence of Super Bowl network CBS Sports, it was also available to millions of users tuning into …

By at least one measure -- the publishers utilizing PubMatic -- real-time bidding is now neck-and-neck with ad networks as a source of advertising revenues. According to a fourth-quarter 2012 analysis released by the sales-side platform, RTB now represents 48% of all ad revenues not sold directly by publishers' own sales organizations. That's just 2 percentage points less than ad networks, which currently generate 50% of all secondary, non-premium advertising sales.