eMarketer has released its second major revision in the last few months for programmatic advertising predictions. This upward spike, as explained by eMarketer vice president Clark Fredricksen, is likely the result of the outcome of multiple studies that imply an increase in the use of programmatic buying as well as an overall growth in digital display advertising.
Programmatic buying, while still a relatively new concept, is growing rapidly and is predicted to be the sole way ads will be bought and sold in the coming years. As a new concept, programmatic is still relatively undefined in terms of what it actually entails. Beginning as a synonym for real-time bidding, the term programmatic has now grown to imply buying ads like you’d buy an iPad on Amazon, buying targeted audiences using compiled data, and the idea that machines will soon control the entirety of the media-buying process.
Peter Naylor, former executive vice president at NBCUniversal, defines programmatic as “a catchall term that many people are using to categorize everything from behavioral and intent-based targeting to real-time bidding and exchange-based buying of inventory. Programmatic is advertising’s newer, better mousetrap.”
This revision, following the analysis of multiple studies conducted by eMarketer, estimates that advertisers will have spent 75.3% more on programmatic advertising this year than they did in 2012. The previous estimate only predicted a 73.9% increase. In terms of money, this means that $3.37 billion is to be spent on programmatic ads in 2013 and an even more astounding $4.66 billion in 2014. This boost in the next year is predicted to come as a result of the efforts of larger tech companies like Facebook and Twitter to educate marketers on the benefits of programmatic spending.
These numbers show, especially following the downward revision last spring, that marketers are well on their way to embracing, as well as promoting, the complex technology behind programmatic buying.
Image Source: Fernando Comet
