How conversant are clients in the finer points of programmatic ad buying? Hardly at all, according to Christine Bensen, Media Strategy SVP at iCrossing. At the risk of offending a few attendees at OMMA RTB Seattle, on Wednesday, Bensen even joked that she has to draw a lot of diagrams for clients. Alas, a lot of people that you'd expect to have fluency in programmatic ad buying are pretty clueless, Bensen continued. As such, she said she's spent the past year doing little else than educating, educating, educating. Yes, "a lot of education," Bensen said. Some less than knowledgeable clients …

Think agencies are growing more comfortable with programmatic systems to protect their precious brands? Maybe, but their fears remain very real, according to Renee' Dornan, Director of Digital at MEC Global. "If you don't know where your [brands are] running, you probably shouldn't be running there," Dornan told her colleagues in attendance at OMMA RTB Seattle, on Wednesday. "There's ... a lot of work being done, but it probably could be done better," Dornan said of industry efforts to improve transparency and viewability standards, while continuing to curb malware, click-fraud, and other issues. Presently, paying for services that can improve …

That was the datapoint from "Are We Branding Yet" moderator Marlo Huang's, VP-strategy at Liquid Advertising, opening question during the opening panel at OMMA RTB Seattle this morning.

Perhaps brand marketers need to stop trying so hard to find the correct message for any one consumer and just allow the natural progression of the person loving the product or service to take place. I heard a forced message from panelists participating in the Predictive Targeting and the Search for New Customers panel. The process of not forcing the connection aligns with Google's mantra to build content that appeals to a specific audience. Consumers are individuals, but not to the point that one ad speaks only to one person. And if you do find the one ad that speaks …

What would a cookie-less world really look like? A landscape dominated by several colossal skyscrapers comes to mind, according to Khurrum Malik, CMO of digital data company eXelate. Yes, without cookies, there would be four or five Web properties (where consumers spend the vast majority of their digital days) that would have supreme insight into consumer behavior, Malik told OMMA RTB attendees on Monday afternoon. Right, "Facebook and Twitter would love that!" agreed Jonathan Slavin, CRO at interative ad holding company CPXi. "A lot of [folks within the advertising community] talk about it, but I don't see it happening," Slavin …

By a show of hands, a clear majority of attendees at OMMA RTB Chicago think Facebook's FBX ad exchange is much closer to a display than a social play. In fact, it's both -- as well as mobile -- Josh Dreller, Director of Marketing Research at Kenshoo, insisted on Monday afternoon. Meanwhile, by another show of hands, just about everyone at OMMA RTB expressed their keen interest in using Facebook data to target ads beyond of the social network's walls.

How much media transparency? Some people believe it is not just getting media transparency from publishers -- but media agencies are well. When asked what kind of transparency media agencies should have, Tim Hanlon, founder/chief executive officer of The Vertere Group, speaking at the OMMA RTB Chicago event, said: “Everyone is entitled to make a margin. It is a matter of rethinking what is the fair amount of profit for conducting business.” He adds: “Everyone is just fearful of everybody being found out. if it’s going to happen, it needs to happen across the spectrum.” And …

Spicing up the transparency debate at OMMA RTB, on Monday, Starcom's Tracey Paull was just asked whether agencies should be held to the same standards of openness that they are demanding of programmatic tech vendors. (MediaPost editor-in-chief Joe Mandese asked the tough question, and referred specifically to agency margin structures, which they have historically kept under lock and key.) Clearly not prepared for the line of questioning, Paull essentially said the discussion was way above her pay grade. "I don't make those decisions," said the Senior Vice President and Director, Deliver, Starcom USA. "I'm not even privy to all that …

Well, Paull, senior vice president at Starcom USA, doesn't actually have an algorithm to deal with all the complexity that makes the programmatic marketplace so darn confusing, but it sounds like she'd like one.

That's according to Andrew Casale, VP of strategy at Casale Media. Speaking on a panel exploring transparency in the programmatic space at OMMA RTB in Chicago, Casale noted that all major publishers have implemented a programmatic strategy, meaning a direct relationship between publisher and ad network is nothing more than a bonus now.