Despite many publishers' open distain for click-through rates, there's a sense that social media -- with all its liking, retweeting, and the like -- is keeping the measurement alive. So Kathryn Koegel, founder and Chief of Insights at Steampunkt Collaborative, suggested on a panel at OMMA Premium on Monday. Socially-driven or not, "click metrics are still there ... but just one part of the puzzle," reasoned Andrea Ching, SVP of Marketing and Promotions at CNN News Network. Neil Katz, Editor-in-Chief and VP of Content at The Weather Company, described click-through rates as something the industry would love to move beyond, …

Getting out of downward spiral of lowest price impressions of publishers in the digital world continues to be difficult. Previously, warnings of lowest price impressions will turn digital advertising into a commodity market -- not unlike buying or selling pork bellies. Speaking at OMMA Premium, moderator Kathryn Koegel, chief of insights and founder of Steampunkt Collaborative says turning this around is creating a “halo” effect for publishers. Andrea Ching, senior vp of marketing and promotion for CNN News Network, says for them it’s all about “tent poles” like of NCAA’s March Madness. For many publishers, …

What' the future of programmatic advertising if cookies disappear?

MediaPost event sales chief Jon Whitfield was so struck by Alan Cohen's "How To Survive The Robot Uprising" presentation at OMMA Premium that he passed along this cool poster created by LIN Digital, which seems to fall on the human side of the man/machine robotic equation.

Barry Lowenthal, president of MDC Partners' The Media Kitchen, slammed Interpublic's Magna Global's estimate that 50% of display advertising is now bought programmatically. He says it's a sham, because he believes the Kitchen is among the most aggressive users of programmatic media buying, and he estimates that only about 20% of the agency's "non-search display inventory" is bought programmatically today. "And from what I hear, that's a lot more than the other holding companies," he said, estimating that it's more like 15% of the display buys bought across Madison Avenue.

Just walked off stage after conducting a "conversation with" Alan Cohen, the former OMD chief who recently launched creative media (or is it media creative) start up Giant Spoon, and the ideas are racing through my head. That's because the core of Cohen's presentation focused on a concept he calls "idea-centric strategy." In fact, Cohen's Giant Spoon even trademarked the term -- amazingly.