OMMA RTB at Advertising Week in New York got off to an interesting -- and fitting, giving the complexity of the space -- start. When asked to define programmatic, every panelist had a different answer. We even vicariously heard from the 11-year-old son of Craig Atkinson, chief operating and digital officer of PHD.

Are we still drowning in data to get all we know about audiences? Speaking at OMMA Audience Targeting, George Musi, senior partner, director of analytics, insights and attribution for Mindshare, said that for many people collecting huge volumes of data can make "people extremely scary.” Musi says it's a puzzle. But a brand might not need all of that data. "It can put you further down the rabbit hole."It's a question about what a marketer's needs. He adds that: “75% gets me a clarity picture? Sure. Maybe 80%... Fundamentals are important, then it's an additive process.""Drowning suggests that we are trying …

Speaking on the "What is an audience?" panel at OMMA Audience Targeting during Advertising Week New York on Wednesday, Dstillery's chief data scientist, Claudia Perlich, gave the best -- any maybe only concrete -- answer.

Well, Brian Monahan, a self-described "recovering media planner" who left Interpublic's Mediabrands more than a year ago to become head of marketing for Walmart.com, didn't say that exactly, but he did say he wished he knew what he knows now on the client side when he was servicing them on the agency side.That is, he said, "that a trusted agency relationship has real juice inside a client organization." "I wish I had just relaxed," Monahan recalled about his days worrying whether the client would be unhappy and, even worse, pull its business.

Real-time, or right time? The ideal answer may be "both," but Mike Margolin, SVP and director of audience strategy at RPA, believes right time trumps real-time. "The need to understand consumers has [always] been around," said Margolin. He was speaking on the "What is an audience?" panel at OMMA Audience Targeting during Advertising Week New York on Wednesday.

When it comes to audience targeting, television represents a paradox for agencies and TV suppliers alike, Catherine Warburton, Chief Investment Officer of MDC Partners' Assembly, indicated during a panel discussion at OMMA Audience Targeting in New York Wednesday. Warburton said some advertisers have begun "testing" programmatic audience targeting platforms, but television is still a "one to many" media buy, making it difficult to benchmark the impact of highly refined audience targeting techniques.

What are some of the bigger roadblocks standing in the way of a thriving addressable TV advertising marketplace? In a word, "education," said Jennifer Koester, SVP of Advanced Advertising Products and Data Analytics at Cablevision. Nick Troiano, BlackArrow President -- and fellow panelist at the OMMA Audience Targeting conference, on Wednesday - said too few ads on alternative media channels is the issue. Also, "There's nothing standard about addressability," noted Michael Bologna, President of Modi Media/GroupM. "Everybody does it differently." Oh, and there's not a ton of urgency in the traditional TV space because supply and demand remains largely unaffected, …

In a keynote interview at the OMMA Audience Targeting conference, Brian Monahan, VP of marketing at Walmart explained that the retail giant tries to balance its collection of user data to better target offers and advertising with a focus on permission-based marketing. “We favor opt-in relationships,” said Monahan. “We’re trying to avoid crossing that creepy line by trying to get permission.” How does Walmart know when it’s gone too far? “The customer will tell you when you’ve got it wrong because you see it in their behavior, “ he said. Monahan added Walmart also tries to avoid personalizing ads too …

That's what Kavita Vazirani, senior vice president-media strategy & sciences at Comcast Cable, suggested we are currently in. The reason: The medium is no longer the message, you are. "I think audience targeting is something that has existed as long as I've been in media," she said during the opening panel discussion at OMMA Audience Targeting in New York. "What's changed is that the consumers have become a form of media."