Programmatic advertising is like a virtual factory. Money goes in at one end; and a delivered audience at a cost comes out at the other. The best programmatic advertising takes all of this technology and envelops the consumer in the most intimate of marketing experiences. The worst uses the same technology to undermine its own intent. Use it wisely. If there is one secret to getting programmatic right, I believe it is a very obvious one, and that is to remember that technology is only the enabler. You start with as granular and as comprehensive a view as you can conceivably assemble of the individual (from any available source). Then you form a view of what creative messages will best engage him or her. Then you scale up. Shortcuts to scale will never be intimate. Search has entered the picture again, not as a clarifier of intent, but more as a channel. Or, even better, your battlefield – the “digital shelf” your product sits on, with two zones, the “organic” zone, which is owned and earned, and the “paid” zone. The organic zone refers to your brand’s appearance in search results due to search- engine optimization and the independent action of the search algorithms, or those results that appear as a result of the action of others – media placements, blog