Dive Brief:

• Both B2B publishers and marketers are finding value in programmatic ads.
• This development is a shift away from B2B’s reliance on traditional channels such as print and event marketing.
• In 2015, U.S. marketers overall are expected to spend more than $2 billion on programmatic video buying.

Dive Insight:

Last year 70% of B2B media budgets went toward the traditional marketing channels of print ads and event marketing. Exemplifying the merging of consumer marketing and B2B tactics, both B2B marketers spending media dollars and B2B publishers are embracing programmatic ads rather than lead generation -- for revenue in the case of publishers, and reaching a target audience for marketers. Illustrating this trend, Purch, a publisher of a number of B2B websites, introduced a native advertising product late last year and also offers an internal auction solution that enables the company to conduct pre-bid inventory management.

This shift likely echoes the increasing importance of video in the B2B marketer’s playbook. Total programmatic video advertising this year will reach a more than 212% increase over last year. The projection is that by next year 40% of U.S. video ad spending will happen via programmatic platforms. It’s a safe bet that B2B media budgets will figure into many of those ad buys.