I recently had a conversation with Mike Welch, who heads AT&T's advertising business, and we very quickly found ourselves doubling back on our discussion to define the term "programmatic TV." Impressed by the clarity of Mike's take on the subject, and assuming that this "definition conversation" is happening in boardrooms and across lunch tables throughout the industry, I am herewith offering up a definition of programmatic advertising - particularly programmatic TV - in the public interest.

As a reaction to the news last week that HBO and CBS plan to offer direct-to-consumer subscription models, Joe Marchese does a great job in last week's Online Spin explaining the impact of the cable bundle. In short, he argues that a la carte pricing for TV content may in the end be more expensive for consumers than the traditional cable subscription model today, and could potentially decrease the quality of programming. While reading his post, I was struck by the similarities between content bundling for consumers and advertising bundling practices that exist today in linear TV. For years the …

A New Yorker cartoon: A man and his young son walk up to an ice cream truck on the street corner. The vendor is an Eskimo. The man and his son request a snow cone. The vendor responds, "You have to be more specific - my people have more than four hundred different words for snow cone."

We all can agree that the major topic at Advertising Week this year was programmatic, which has truly hit its stride and is exceeding all expectations for adoption. But to be clear, the buzz was about digital programmatic, not about programmatic TV. Programmatic TV is still in early innings. However, the week marked a major inflection point for TV. Let me count the ways.

As the industry focuses on programmatic TV as an exciting, emerging way to shore up brands' network TV schedules, it is sometimes easy to forget that one medium is already acting as a highly targeted complement to TV: digital. Pairing advertising from multiple channels to create a greater impact is not a new idea. In fact, most marketers and admen have believed this to be a successful tactic since before the buzzwords "audience targeting" were known in the realm of measured media. What's different today is that, especially in digital, the level of sophistication and science supporting these tactics has …