Down here on Captiva Island attending (and blogging) MediaPost's Social Media Insider Summit, and I'm thinking social media could well be renamed "real-time media," because, well, it is. And by that, I don't just mean things like the Facebook Exchange, where agencies and brands can use programmatic trading to buy audience reach on the social network, though they can obviously do that too. I'm talking about the way social media is changing the way we communicate, share things -- whether it is brand-related or other things -- all in real-time. There was no better example of this than a conversation …

Forbes released its list of America's Most Promising Companies earlier this week, and real-time media's presence is felt. Rocket Fuel (4) and OpenX (7) both crack the top 10, while AdRoll (30) and Rubicon Project (40) are both in the top 40. With so many ad tech firms being so promising, it's easy to see why many in the industry believe that programmatic is the future of advertising. But another thing this list shows is that programmatic isn't just a success in terms of delivering ads - successful companies can be built around programmatic. None of the four companies listed …

Welcome to today's edition of Fail-Time Daily. Normally, I don't like basing articles on personal anecdotes, but this is a blog, right, so what the heck. Plus it's topical (it happened this morning) and it's on message, because it's definitely about real-time marketing, or rather, the lack thereof. But first, let me tell you how much I love Patagonia. Everything about it. The company, its brand -- and everything it stands for -- and especially its products, which perform as well as they are priced. That said, after shelling out plenty of synchillas in my time, I like a good …

"A first-of-its-kind multi-channel B2C customer acquisition solution that maximizes customer conversion and online marketing ROI by delivering the most valuable prospects and customers to leading brands." That, hands-down, was the winner of today's edition of Hyperbabble, a contest I play with myself each day to select the best (or as the case may be, worst) examples of advertising and media technology jargon. Today's runner-up, by the way, was, "A breakthrough platform that allows advertisers to target their audience with an unprecedented level of pinpoint accuracy through a multi-layered approach to customer targeting and segmentation."

On Monday, real-time digital ad tech company Rocket Fuel released a white paper to answer 10 basic questions people have about programmatic buying. The white paper saw over 100 downloads before it was officially released, so RTM Daily sat down with the principal authors of the white paper, Roland Siebelink, product marketing director, enterprise, and Eshwar Belani, VP, products and business development, to pick their brains about why people in the industry are so anxious for more information on programmatic buying, the future of the market, and where it needs to improve.

"A crowded space with a bunch of technologies that are largely redundant and not so different from each other. One which will inevitably see a lot of consolidation with a few dominant leaders emerging from the rubble." That's the way one top marketing exec characterized the term "ad technology," when asked to participate in a new benchmarking study conducted by Advertiser Perceptions Inc. (see related story). It seems marketing executives feel a lot like trade journalists when it comes to this subject, because I have never experienced more of a deluge of businesses, business models, and business jargon in more …

Earlier this week, GSI Commerce announced a partnership with Ensighten, a real-time "tag management" systems provider. The question is, what exactly is a real-time tag management system? I'll try to break it down as simple as possible. Basically, it's a system that allows companies to manage all of their web site's third party "tags" (not exactly cookies, but a close cousin) in one location. And, from that single location, they can manage all of the data collected by those tags.

On Tuesday, the Rubicon Project announced two strategic hires, bringing Mediaplex Founder & CEO Greg Raifman in as president and founding Overture CFO Todd Tappin in as COO & CFO, and giving Rubicon founder-CEO Frank Addante some much-needed bench strength. While the reorg comes amid rumors that Rubicon is a takeover target, in the following Q&A Addante makes the case that it will be a suitor, not a seller, as its steps up its own M&A efforts to accelerate growth and diversify and broaden its portfolio.

Here's an interesting form of real-time media: Real-time resumes. It's called TweetsResume, created by IT Resume Service. The tool puts an RSS feed into a resume of the owner's Twitter feed, which is updated in real-time. It mixes three things: Social, real-time media, and marketing...of yourself. When you think about it, people have been branding themselves forever -- even more so sincecsocial media took off. But this idea that we need to make it even easier just goes to show how much the real-time media mentality continues to makes its way through the cracks into every aspect of our lives.

Who hasn't wished for an app that could automatically suss out the truth, and in real-time? Now, thanks to the political news team at The Washington Post, there's one available for political speeches (see story below), which makes me wonder when (note to MediaPost's tech team) someone will develop a fact-checking app for the ad technology industry. But then, I suppose, I'd be out of a job, right? Anyway, today I'm spending my morning parsing through a number of first-mover claims in the mobile RTB marketplace. And while it's impossible for me to vet exactly which ones are genuine first-to-market …