Despite the continuous developments around ad fraud and brand safety, programmatic advertising spend is expected to grow in 2020 with 69% of media set to be traded programmatically, according to Zenith’s latest forecast.
With media being traded, programmatic ad spend is set to exceed $100 billion, reaching $106 billion by the end of the year. This will rise to $127 billion in 2020 and $147 billion in 2021 when 72% of digital media will be programmatic.
Programmatic remains strong in UK
Specifically, in the UK, programmatic ad spend remains high to 2021 with the amount set to exceed £6 billion and represent 88% of all UK digital display ad spending.
In 2018, video in the UK became the largest type of programmatic inventory, and this will account for 58% of programmatic ad spend in 2019. Meanwhile, 80% of programmatic ads appear on mobile devices.
While programmatic continues to rise, its ad spend growth is slowing due to industry
challenges of privacy and supply-chain that must be addressed to resume faster growth — falling from 35% in 2018 to 22% in 2019, and forecast at 19% in 2020 and 16% in 2021.
According to Zenith, brands need to develop new targeting techniques using first-party data and customer data platforms in response to the ongoing challenges around cookie tracking.
“The ongoing death of the cookie means that the industry needs to rethink the way we design targeting and personalisation while respecting consumers’ privacy rights,” said Matt James, Zenith’s Global Brand President; “High-quality, first-party data is more vital to the success of programmatic marketing than ever before.”