This works great for a media organization like ours. It's not hard to convince a company that sells power plant control software that anyone who reads utilitydive.com is a good candidate for their ad.

But it's gonna be tough for sites that are "general interest" or even very specific but on a topic that just doesn't have big ad budgets behind it. Our approach also depends on building a recognizable brand in the industry and having a robust in-house ad sales and operations people.

I'm not here to defend programmatic advertising, but I think if/when it goes away it's gonna suck for a lot of small indie sites.