Programmatic advertising overtakes growth of social in 2017

In the coming year, programmatic will grow “comfortably faster” than social media. Social media is currently set to grow at 25%, and online video at 20%. Meanwhile programmatic advertising is set to grow 31% in the year 2017, said a recent report by Zenith. A growing proportion of other digital channels will also be traded programmatically.Programmatic is now being used in conjunction with valuable data segments to target individuals and identifying who is the most likely to be receptive to brand messages, often in premium environments. Previously, programmatic marketing used a way to reach target audiences as cheaply as possible.As such, the report states that programmatic ad spend has also grown from US$5 billion in 2012 to US$39 billion this year at an average rate of 71% a year. The report stated that programmatic will become the principal method of trading digital display and it will account for 51% of expenditure, rising to 58% in 2017.However the rate of growth is slowing down as it consolidates its dominance of the display market. Zenith states that it is now expecting programmatic advertising to grow at an average of 28% a year to 2018, when it will reach US$64billion.The programmatic ad market is at its largest in the US. Worth US$24 billion this year, it accounts for 62% of total global programmatic ad spend. The UK comes at a distant second at US$3.3 billion and China third at 23%.According to Benoit Cacheux, global head of digital and innovation at Zenith, the growth of programmatic will continue to be fuelled by improvements in the quality of media available in programmatic environments.This is especially so in private market places, especially with the greater availability of programmatic mobile media and also the sophistication provided by ad tech solutions. These solutions include data management platforms and connected ad tech stacks.“Programmatic buying of digital media has become the norm in major markets, and is aggressively following this path in smaller markets,” Cacheux said.The report covers 41 key advertising markets and its figures refer only to digital media. However, it notes that programmatic trading is spreading into traditional media. In fact, some television, radio and digital out-of-home platforms already offer automated and data-driven trading of inventory.