The cookie may still dominate, but new ways of targeting are springing up left and right, each more interesting than the last. Perhaps no strategy is as unique -- or as old, depending on your perspective -- as Gagein's. The Silicon Valley-based start-up has technology that tracks news across the Web and tells B2B marketers which stories they should pay attention to.

Some say ad tech and automation are changing agencies by requiring them to have fewer people and more machines, while others maintain the tech simply calls for different people. Another take is that tech companies are plucking people from agencies to come work for them directly. That's what I thought of with this morning's news of Paul Longo moving from MediaVest to Accordant Media, and while you can't point to one person moving from an agency to a tech company and declare a revolution, it's clear the lines are blurring.

I'm sure many a CEO has tied one on after floating an IPO, but Rubicon Project's Frank Addante did so beforehand. Looking at images of Addante ringing the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell, I was struck by the fact that I'd never seen him in a suit and tie before. Come to think of it, I've never seen him wearing anything but a jeans and a polo shirt festooned with Rubicon's logo. So I had to ask him if he had the logo somewhere on his business attire. Not surprisingly, he had it front-and-center, on a custom-made Rubicon logo …

There are two major shifts occurring in digital advertising, as advertisers move toward automation and mobile. But how should advertisers traverse mobile? They could combine the two trends and automate mobile campaigns through real-time bidding (RTB), or they could tap an ad network. The two options are not mutually exclusive, per se, but Mike Miller, SVP of sales and marketing at RTB.com, believes RTB is the way to go.

TV, social media and second-screening seem to be a trifecta made in advertising heaven, but the "second screen" can be a confusing carousel featuring desktops, tablets and smartphones. (And don't forget the ultimate variable -- different operating systems.) However, according to 33Across, an ad technology company that gathers consumer data from its online publisher partners, the tablet is coming into its own, as evidenced through some new data surrounding the recently concluded NCAA Basketball tournament.

Why learn, when you can be omniscient from the start? That's what Tribal Fusion is asking, as it launched a new technology meant to speed up the "learning" bit of "machine learning." Actually, the company wants to accelerate the learning curve so much that you never even notice it.

At the MediaPost Video Insider Summit Tuesday morning, Simulmedia CRO John Piccone said that programmatic wants to be media on autopilot, but other panelists argued that it will never be fully automated. He said programmatic wants to get to the point where "media is just transacting itself because the humans in the room have defined what the business success metrics are, the parameters, the creative, etc., and then you push the button and media just runs on autopilot," he said "That's what it wants to be."

Ad tech is commoditized, says Pivotal Research Group's Brian Wieser, and outsourced to the point that many ad tech providers out there share the same blood. "For much of the industry involved in selling real-time ad trading products (including companies which compete with each other) Iponweb and AppNexus provide the critical ingredient of technology," writes Wieser in a research report.

The madness of March is over, but the NCAA basketball tournament rolls on with the Final 4 set to play on Saturday evening. SponsorHub, a company that tracks the marketability of teams and athletes, did so for this year's college basketball players in near real-time.

Rubicon Project officially went public on Wednesday, with CEO Frank Addante and a host of other company execs ringing the bell to welcome "RUBI" to the New York Stock Exchange. The company went public at $15 a share, and at one point yesterday afternoon the shares were trading at over $21 a pop, an increase of about 40%. The stock price hovered around the $20 mark since about 10:45 in the morning, and closed at $20.09, up 33.9%.