As big as it is – and mind you, it is big (6 billion impressions in the U.S. and maybe 15 billion globally at any point in time) – it's still a small piece of what's actually on the Internet, says Michael Rubenstein, president of AppNexus and a panelist on the closing "Grill The Vendors" panel at OMMA Ad Nets. "One of the problems with RTB [real time bidding] today, is that despite the fact that the volume of inventory has grown rapidly, there is still so much of the inventory that is not RTB-enabled. The largest sources on …

"Where did the 400 number come from, anyway," Andy Atherton, COO of Brand.net, during a panel discussion of publishers and ad nets during OMMA Ad Nets. The 400, of course, was the apocryphal 400 advertising networks that currently exist in the online display advertising marketplace. "I mean, I'm in the business, and I can think of maybe a couple of dozen good ones," Atherton said, implying that the oft-quoted number maybe suspect. "Where did the 400 number come from," Undertone Networks' Eric Franchi, echoed – genuinely forgetting the original source. "ThinkEquity," someone from the audience crowed, reminding …

Ad networks need 100 million unique viewers to make an impact, says Eric Franchi, senior vice president of development at Undertown Networks. I think there's a shakedown going on right now," he says. "We'll look back and say it's 2010 when it started."

Eric Sass, MediaPost reporter, led the "Publishers and Ad Nets: Finding a New Détente" where panelists discussed the contention between ad networks and publishers. Some believe money has not moved online as fast as eyeballs, but Eric Franchi, senior business development at Undertone Networks, disagrees. He says there's too much remnant inventory. He believes one of the problems resides in 20% of the impressions come from Facebook and MySpace. Inventory lacks quality.

Who is dictating the ad network business? Look to the economy -- past and future. "The vast majority of businesses are allowing the buy side to dictate a lot," says Mark Papia, senior vp of performance marketing at Fox Interactive Media, says during the OMMA Ad Nets conference. "The general economic conditions have a lot to do with that." But ad networks will grow. "As you see critical mass you are also going to achieve a an increase in prices," says Anthony Katsur, general manager of MediaMath. "Performance will dictate value. You seen a stabilization and increase …

Well, sort of. The folks on the "Get Me Creative: Does Don Draper Have Any Place In a Data-Driven World?" panel at OMMA Ad Nets gave some pretty creative responses to that question. Starting with moderator Mike Leo, CEO of Operative. "Certainly, creativity has taken a backseat to technology in this industry," Leo said, setting up his panel. He also turned to the audience and asked the obligatory questions: How many people have seen some really creative spots on TV in the last few months (a lot); and how many people have seen some really creative ads online in …

That's the subtext I've been picking up on at OMMA Ad Nets in Los Angeles. It was said during the agency panel earlier today. It was echoed during the "Ad Net Survival" panel a bit later. And it was emphasized by Initiative Managing Director Michael Hayes during his afternoon keynote. "It's not about audiences," Hayes said about the shift taking place on Madison Avenue. "It's about individuals." That's interesting, because parent Interpublic's Mediabrands has made a lot of noise about repositioning its media shops, and trading system Cadreon, around the notion that they are no longer buying …

Clix Marketing founder David Szetela led an OMMA Ad Nets panel "Simplify the Stack: Fighting the New Cost and Complexity of Media Buying." Some of those complexities reside in disparate data silos, tough to keep staff for more than 24 months, and service and technology providers keep adding "black boxes" that confuse clients more. Very few have a data warehouse. They haven't been making the investments in data.

Joshua Wepman, vice president of GCA Savvian, did a pretty good job of filling in for his arguably more colorful colleague, Terrence Kawaja of explaining the growing complexity of the audience-buying marketplace that has emerged in the online display marketplace. And he even offered a few new epiphanies, riffing on Kawaja's now famous and well-circulated marketplace chart with a few breakdowns of his own. For the benefit of MediaPost Raw Blog readers, I've taken the liberty of further compressing these into a few simple top line insights from Wepman's presentation. The first column shows the amount of a …

Over the next year the new phenomenon of DSPs will continue evolving, according to Brian Miaklis, VP of performance sales for Pandora, with new specialties focusing "on local, search advertisers in display, or certain kinds of data."