Two reports about programmatic advertising came out this week that appear to be in stark contrast to one another. On the one hand, Chango released survey results that found that 75% of brand advertisers are using programmatic technologies, with another 16% planning to do so in the future. On the other hand, another report, from Strata, found that 20% of agencies "trust programmatic buying to properly execute ad dollars."

Not too long ago, one school of thought questioned whether or not programmatic advertising could truly take hold in the industry, or if the use of the real-time trading tech would simply turn into a "race to the bottom." Today, there are far more optimists than skeptics. New survey results from Chango, a demand-side platform, reveal that 75% of brand marketers are currently using programmatic.

The real currency of digital advertising -- data -- is a blessing and a curse for programmatic traders. It's how marketers can feel differentiated, but it's also where marketers can feel insufficient and overwhelmed. Matt Westover, GM of Turn's data management platform (DMP), Audience Suite, contends that brands are resting their data laurels on targeting and ad delivery, leaving opportunities on the table as a result. He believes brands are "wasting a ton of good data."

What can the RTB (real-time bidding) ad industry learn from fast food restaurants? Well, not much if we're being serious about it, but we can anecdotally ascertain. I ate at PDQ for lunch the other day -- with "PDQ" pretending to stand for "People Dedicated to Quality" when everyone knows it secretly stands for "Pretty Damn Quick" -- and pretty damn quick they were. So quick, in fact, that my order was ready and my name called before I had even paid for the meal.

Thursday's RTBlog initially stated that AOL's Q3 2014 revenue was $473.4 million, not $626.8 million. The article has been updated to reflect this. The $473.4 million figure was the company's global ad revs, not the company's total revs for the quarter.

In its Q3 2014 earnings announcement this morning, AOL revealed that it has earned $626.8 million in revenue for the quarter. Of that $473.4 million, AOL Platforms -- the division which houses the company's ad tech stack -- accounted for $271.9 million, up from $247.1 million in the second quarter.

Audience buying is becoming the new norm in the ad industry, and Adroit Digital, a digital ad tech firm, is looking to take it to new levels by acquiring Arcametrics, a North Carolina-based ad firm with predictive modeling technology. Following the acquisition, Adroit is launching the "Adroit Digital Marketing Collective," a hub through which audiences buyers can buy, well, audiences.

Rocket Fuel has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging the digital ad industry to prove its mettle and take the "Quality Challenge." To help make the challenge a reality, Rocket Fuel this morning released Traffic Scanner, which it describes as "an impressions and traffic-quality monitoring tool." It is free to use for anyone in the industry, not just Rocket Fuel clients.

The ironically named OpenDirect API from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is just as paradoxical as the trading method it is designed for: programmatic direct. But odd semantics aside, the automated side of the digital ad industry, after being so often relegated to the slums of the Internet, is now primed for a push toward quality.