Dive Brief:
- Nearly two-thirds of all digital display ads will be programmatic by 2019, reaching an estimated $84.9 billion, according to estimates by Publicis Groupe Zenith.
- Global programmatic ad sales are set to hit $57.5 billion this year and are growing 21% annually. The U.S. is driving much of this growth, per the report, increasing its percentage of programmatic display ads above the global average from 78% to 83.6% in 2017.
- The U.S. is also spearheading the shift of programmatic from solely digital to include media like TV, radio and out-of-home (OOH), the report said. Programmatic spend in these "traditional" areas make up 6% of the total and is forecast to hit 13%, or $13 billion, by 2019.
Dive Insight:
The estimates come while some marketers question programmatic's effectiveness, mainly due to a lack of control over where their ads appear online. Without this control, some brand content is ending up on sites promoting violence, leading to potential reputation damage and low ROI.
Despite these issues, spending on programmatic is on the rise due to its automated, efficient nature and the fact that the use of artificial intelligence to help make the process more precise is on the rise. Such precision holds out hope that brands can start to deploy one-to-one marketing at scale, which is something of a Holy Grail in digital marketing.
Digital display ads will soon become entirely programmatic, according to the Zenith report. More traditional media like TV, radio and OOH that are historically tricky to automate, will follow suit.
Even though programmatic isn't perfect, its automated nature makes it attractive for advertisers and agencies running large-scale or digital campaigns. Adobe launched a cross-media ad campaign implemented solely through a programmatic platform earlier in November, which demonstrates the efficiencies around programmatic and serves as a message to marketers that the ad buying strategy can provide relevancy at scale.
