Most people in the ad-tech universe are talking about transparency in one way or another. Transparency means different things to different people--it involves media buys, media pricing, viewability standards, the assessment of non-human traffic, relationships among ad-tech vendors, agencies, publishers and marketers, and more. But here's a piece of the transparency equation we hear less about: accountability.

In the past few years, SxSW has taken some criticism. Has it gotten too broad? Irrelevant? Definitely not this time, at least where programmatic is concerned.

Cadreon's Erica Schmidt gave a presentation on a viewability study at the IAB Programmatic Marketplace.

Turner is focused on programmatic ad sales and sees potential in PMPs.

While many people are bullish about mobile programmatic -- after all, time spent on mobile devices is surging -- there's a learning curve and challenges for marketers that want to dive in.

We've been hearing and talking a lot about transparency in programmatic media buying, and media buying in general. The issues of transparency are very real -- day in and day out. Joe Weaver, president and CEO of Promatica Consulting, tries to work through these issues with marketers arm-wrestling with their media agencies, ad-tech vendors and other partners.

Research finding on programmatic media conducted by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Forrester Research make it plain: Growth in programmatic media could stall if issues around transparency aren't resolved--right now.

TubeMogul's "Manifesto For Independence" campaign taking Google to task certainly packs a punch. TubeMogul says Google doesn't play fair with marketers, maintaining the search giant has a "conflict of interest."

GABBCON (the Global Audience Based Buying Conference) launched last year, born out of a frustration with the lack of standards and shared vocabulary around audience buying for TV and video in particular, according to co-founder Gabe Greenberg, formerly of The Trade Desk and Delivery Agent.

This week the Global Audience Based Buying Conference (GABBCON) gathered for its New York Audience-Based Buying Summit. GABBCON bills itself as a group of organizations that aren't "satisfied with the status quo" and who are or want to be active in audience-based buying. The group went public with version 1.0 of its Automated Linear Broadcast Cross Device Standard or (ABCDs). Well, at least the acronym is easy enough.