Joanna O'Connell joined ad tech company MediaMath as chief marketing officer after a stint as lead analyst at AdExchanger. RTBlog had the pleasure of speaking with her on the industry and developments to come in 2016.

RTBlog checked in with ad-tech software firm Mediaocean for thoughts on 2016. Bill Wise, CEO, and Meghan Grienenberger, VP of media operations at Mbuy, a division of Mediaocean, weighed in with predictions.

Adam Padilla is co-founder of Brandfire, a boutique creative, design and brand agency. To properly execute a real-time campaign, "your creative team has to be at the ready to create content -- but most importantly, your brand-management and social media teams have to be in lockstep," he says.

John Montgomery is COO GroupM Connect, N.A., one of the biggest media buying and planning agencies in the world. RTBlog asked him for his thoughts about trends in 2016 and beyond, and he offered particularly insightful gems.

Scott Ferber is the hyper-kinetic chairman and CEO of Videology, a B2B ad-tech platform that focuses on premium programmatic inventory. RTBlog recently spoke with Ferber - a self-described "math guy" - about industry trends and what's coming down the pike.

Layoffs at PubMatic came just a week after Turn announced layoffs of 57 employees amid a company restructuring. Rocket Fuel shed nearly 129 employees in April. It's Q4 and this stuff happens all the time across industries, but what can we read in the tea leaves about these reductions?

Accordant Media's Art Muldoon and Matt Greitzer say viewabiilty metrics will remain confusing in 2016. There will be fewer -- but probably better -- ads, and private marketplaces will take hold.

RTBlog reached out to Art Muldoon and Matt Greitzer, co-founders of Accordant Media who cast their predictions for 2016. Among their projections, programmatic will become a truly cross-channel discipline.

Normally, I don't like to use this blog to grouse about the behind-the-scenes ops of one of our sources, but it's rare that I have this kind of opportunity to share with you how one them operates. More importantly, I think it's instructive of the value of data, analytics, information and especially time, in what we keep telling ourselves is a "real-time" business. Or in this case, of the Index Exchange's analytics team, not so much.

Kelly Wenzel, chief marketing officer at Centro, a digital advertising technology firm that's on the front lines of marketing technology, thinks consolidation of ad tech systems, the arms race for talent, data and customer service are key for 2016.