Marketo, a leader in the marketing automation space, this week announced partnerships with two ad tech companies -- Rocket Fuel and Turn -- to help bridge the gap between marketing automation and programmatic advertising.

Over the weekend, Malwarebytes Labs discovered a "booby-trapped" ad that infected users simply by loading. The malicious ad -- masquerading as Hugo Boss ad -- was delivered via real-time bidding (RTB) on the Engage:BDR ad network. The "advertiser" won the RTB impression for a CPM of $2.31, per Malwarebytes. The incident

Tapad, a cross-screen marketing technology provider, is the latest to offer marketers a way to measure the impact digital advertising has on in-store sales -- a trend that was thrust into the spotlight late last year when Oracle shelled out an estimated "high hundreds of millions" to acquire Datalogix. Tapad's news isn't as groundbreaking as Oracle's -- hundreds of millions of dollars are not trading hands -- but it continues the trend nonetheless.

The programmatic TV ad industry went through another growth spurt this week, as the supply-side of this budding industry received major reinforcements. A new player entered the fray, and two companies saw their pockets get deeper. In Monday's RTBlog I wrote about the programmatic TV marketplace -- but perhaps I should have waited until Friday.

This week's news from TBR that ad technology revenue will grow over 300% by 2020, reaching $100 billion -- that is, net revenue all ad tech vendors are expected to make -- was an eye-opener. The growth is only possible if programmatic technologies expand to new markets and marketers -- something that is happening.

In an "RTB Insider" post in late 2014, Turn's Maureen Little predicted that in 2015, custom programmatic technologies would be applied to new verticals, including CPG, B2B and financial services, to name a few. And while programmatic was being used in all of those verticals prior to 2015, at least one part of Little's prediction is coming true: B2B marketers are now getting custom programmatic technologies.

While serving as managing director of the Mindshare trading desk, Joe Weaver saw an opportunity. He saw brands taking programmatic ad-buying operations in-house -- or at least contemplating it -- and experienced firsthand the types of questions and demands that marketers were making, some of which were left unanswered and unmet. 'Real-Time Daily' spoke with Weaver about his decision to launch Promatica and the general trends he is seeing in the market today as it pertains to the still-hot topic of brands taking programmatic in-house.

Programmatic television may be several years from full maturity, but it's an expanding segment of the market. Perhaps nothing indicates that more than the literal expansion of programmatic TV marketplaces. Visible World, a TV audience targeting firm, and its subsidiary AudienceXpress, a programmatic TV-buying platform, have announced partnerships with SintecMedia, a broadcast management software firm. Visible World and AudienceXpress will use SintecMedia's TV marketplace -- dubbed OnBoard -- to buy and sell TV inventory programmatically.

Facebook recently removed over a dozen companies from its official Facebook Exchange (FBX) partner list -- though some of those partners remain connected to FBX behind the scenes. The move to decertify roughly half of its connected partners "made sense for Facebook, and it makes sense for brands too, because FBX performance is abysmal," asserted one industry expert.

Last year, the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) suggested that marketers aim for 70% viewability on campaigns in 2015. The 4As didn't like that, saying 70% wasn't good enough for them and that the industry should aim higher. However, according to new research from Sizmek, 70% really might be a reliable stepping stone.