I read with delight a series of announcements that appeared after the beginning of the new year. The first was the news of a programmatic "first" in the TV space, when ESPN facilitated the bidding of avail on the set of ESPN's "Sports Center." It reminded me of the leap that Google's TV Ads product had made by automating the process by which ads could be bought on TV through an interface.

Is "remnant" a good thing or a bad thing? How could the same word to describe undesirable ad inventory be interpreted both ways simultaneously? Why does it still cast a long shadow on TV, but has disappeared into the sunset of the online advertising lexicon? Let's flip back a few pages into the media archives and find out.

As I read through the multiple year-end wrap-ups on the growth and future of programmatic in media, it seems many commenters put TV at a disadvantage. But TV audience buying is only half the story of programmatic TV. The other half is technology automation. And the good news is that the tech is much further along than many realize. In fact, in some areas, it has leapfrogged over digital tech.

A small group of folks spent 2013 touting programmatic TV as an important sales and buying initiative, but it was merely a twinkle in the eyes of those making 2014 predictions. When we flip the calendar forward to the prophecies for 2015, programmatic TV and its growth trajectory are now part of nearly every prediction list. Here are some standouts: