Recent quotes:

Here's how Mediabrands CEO Matt Seiler expressed it in a recent AdExchanger interview: "If you push for automation you've got to find a different way to be compensated. Because if it means you stripping out a bunch of bodies, we're not all just going to make less money. We need to make money based on something that is more important than spend or body count."
The unnamed senior marketer quoted above said, "The more I look into programmatic, the more I look into partners, the more I see pressure on the agency model. That's going to be a storyline over time." He continued: "The old school mentality is, I've got an agency I can fire if things don't work. The new school is, I need control of the data. I don't want any risk that I'll be part of a 10-client deal. I want to be part of a one-client deal."
For publishers, however, the picture is arguably bleak. An academic paper released earlier this month from The Nesson Center for Internet Geophysics posits the theory that we’ve reached “peak ads.” The basic premise is the advertising arms race is leading to decreased effectiveness – more than 5 trillion display ads will be shown in the U.S. alone this year. Decreased effectiveness spawns more ads, which further decreases effectiveness. Even worse, the youngest audiences are the most immune to these ads and the mobile era makes them even less effective.