Efficiency and cost savings from programmatic buying are all well and good, but Bob Arnold, associate director, global digital strategy, Kellogg Company, warns, ""the greatest media plan cannot make up for lousy creative." Kellogg established a team to maintain strict quality standards for online ad creative.

Every dollar that Kellogg took out of traditional direct-to-publisher and ad networks and moved to programmatic buying produced a 5X increase in ROI, according to Bob Arnold, associate director, global digital strategy, Kellogg Company.

RTB-- Real Time Bidding -- can be questionable for some. Critics say there can be "data leakage," for example. "Data is an asset for us," says Mark Westlake, chief revenue officer of TechMedia Network. "People that come and steal that data, that's concern for us." Here's the good news: "It's a good way of testing, a good way of getting new advertisers," says Westlake. Also, if publishers can not used third parties -- sometimes -- that helps. "For publishers, not blocking campaigns means it is more direct." And Westlake likes that.  

Google's a monopoly when it comes to search, and clients don't buy search on their platform because of the technology. They do it because they can't get it anywhere else, said Paul Dolan, Managing Director, North America, Xaxis.

According to Paul Dolan, Managing Director, North America, Xaxis, that's the long-term goal of Xaxis.

Because there's no way you can buy media in an RTB marketplace without it. Well, at least not if you're a human being and not a machine, said Art Muldoon, CEO and Co-Founder of independent agency trading desk Accordant.

Well, pretty much. Actually, he opened with a doozie of a question, jumping right into the cricket-chirp-inspiring question: "What's wrong with arbitrage?"

Former Madison Avenue economic guru and current Wall Street analyst Brian Wieser has given a pretty good history lesson on the evolution of the modern day ad agency leading up to Madison Avenue's current quagmire, but he says the notion that digital media has been facilitating the "disintermediation" of ad agencies is way overblown, and probably plain wrong.

Actually, Monahan, the opening keynoter at OMMA RTB, explained what's really going on with the movement toward redefining the meaning of ad impressions. You know, the whole push toward things like "viewable impressions" and "attentiveness."

Monahan believe big issues still exist. The industry must resolve problems around transparency vs. margin pressure, privacy vs. user experience, creativity vs. production efficiency, bundling insertion vs. simultaneous consumption, and audience vs. outcome.