What does the idea of brand voice bring to mind? For Tom Lillig, Director of Brand Management at Stone Ward Advertising, it's a lot like pornography. "You know it when you see it," he told attendees of OMMA Chicago on Monday. In order to properly represent clients and their voices, however, Stone Ward relies on "brand education campaigns" to initiate all staffers in a position to represent the brand on any channel. On the topic of brand voice, Melyssa Banda, Senior Director of Product Marketing at WD, thinks everyone needs to loosen up. "Brands can't be sterile," she said. "They …

That seemed to be one of the bigger ideas emanating on the "Big Idea" panel on that opened the first day of OMMA Chicago. And mainly, it's because of what's going on -- not in Chicago, or even New York, L.A. or any other big advertising industry Mecca -- but in, you guessed it, Silicon Valley. "One of the reasons we're obsessed with Silicon Valley," Razorfish Executive Creative Director Sam Cannon said, is because, "we've just seen a ton of creativity coming out of Silicon Valley. We've seen products and services that have changed how we behave." Sure that includes …

The art of Madison Avenue got off on a skeptical note this morning at OMMA Chicago, where MediaPost is hosting a two-day event on the art, then the science, of advertising. Opening panel moderator Bob Haukoos, president and founder of TVAdvertising.com, began with a "breaking" advertising news story, which made this trade editor sweat bullets that we had missed something big. He proceeded to "report" on news that Fox had announced it decided to pull out of airing the ad industry's Clio awards in prime-time this year, because of some research the venerable Fox research team did, which concluded, "everyone …

Digital publishers continue to wrestle with the Media Rating Council decision in coming with a guideline of what it considers acceptable video ad viewability. The official standard for non-video online advertising viewability is that 50% of the pixels of the ad must be viewable to the user for at least one continuous second; for online video that is two continuous seconds.   But industry experts have stronger opinions on what it considers a minimum viewability standards-- somewhat higher than the MRC's purview: "70% viewability,” says Matt Arkin, vp of programmatic sales for video reach, YuMe, speaking at the OMMA Real-Time Buying event in …

How are agencies adapting to stricter video viewability standards, and getting viewers to spend a bit more time watching their ads. For New York-based agency Protagonist, one "trick" is to get right into the brand story, according to cofounder Jordan Rednor. "We have changed our creative thinking to make sure we adapt [to viewability issues]," Rednor told attendees of the OMMA RTB conference, on Thursday. Agencies like Protagonist are also looking to direct marketers and TV networks, which are facing similar challenges, Rednor said.

Lest there was any doubt, continuing to push the limits of personal privacy is key to the business models of Web giants like Facebook and Google, privacy experts assert. To that point, "Most of what happens in the marketing world today is done out of competiveness and necessity," according to Joseph Turow, a Robert Lewis Shayon Professor at UPenn's Annenberg School of Communication. Specifically, "Facebook is doing what it wants to do ... and the name of the game is personalization," Turow told attendees of the OMMA RTB conference, on Thursday. What's more, even among younger users, Turow insisted that …

Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania, just gave a great example of the problems with targeting consumers based on their online behavioral data: That it often doesn't deliver the primary benefit that the industry tells consumers they will reap, more relevant targeting. As an example, Turow cited research conducted that showed 86% of consumers did not want political ads targeted at them. The problem, he said, is that the "poltical media guys" said "tough luck."

Compared to closed exchanges, is the quality of inventory that much lower in open RTB exchanges? By "a country mile," according to Rob Master, Vice President Media at Unilever. Unfortunately, Master told attendees of OMMA RTB, on Thursday, Unilever has "not found the quality we had hoped." While not comfortable making a quality assessment, Joe Kowan, President of the Programmatic Buying Unit at GroupM, said open exchanges certainly "set a very low bar." Among other issues, that presents "challenges with scale," Kowan added.

Consumer goods giant Unilever has been using programmatic advertising for three years, Rob Master, the company's VP of media, said at OMMA RTB on Thursday, but the company hasn't seen the type of scale in the open real-time bidding (RTB) marketplaces it expected. Specifically, it hasn't seen the type of quality scale it desires.

In the first morning panel at OMMA RTB focused on whether programmatic buying can be fused with creative storytelling, agency executives suggested data can be used to inform ad creative as well as audience targeting. Rachel Pasqua, head of mobility, MEC North America said humans would still be responsible for shaping the overall creative message and variations, but that the actual assembly of the ads could be handled by machines. Jen Brady, CEO of Fred & Associates, and Craig Atkinson, chief digital officer at PHD added that more fluid communication among agency departments would help foster a better integration  of …