Two thirds of the world’s digital display advertising (67%) will be traded programmatically by 2019, up from 59% in 2017, according to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts, published today. In the UK, the figure is expected to rise from 77% to 90% over the next two years.
The value of advertising sold programmatically will rise from US$57.5 billion in 2017 to US$84.9 billion in 2019, growing at an average rate of 21% a year.
Programmatic trading is most advanced in Canada, the US and the UK, where Zenith estimates 81%, 78% and 77% of digital display advertising will be bought programmatically this year, respectively. This is followed by Denmark (70%) and France (63%).
The US is the largest programmatic market by far, valued at US$32.6 billion – 57% of the global total – followed by China at US$5.3 billion. However, just 29% of digital display advertising is currently traded programmatically in China, leaving scope for a huge amount of growth in future.
Zenith estimates that US$5.6 billion will be spent programmatically across television, radio, cinema and outdoor in the US this year, representing 6% of total ad expenditure in these media.
This is expected to rise to US$13 billion by 2019, or 13.6% of the total.
“The most advanced display markets will be 90% programmatic by 2019. It won’t be many years after that until the global display market is fully programmatic,” said Jonathan Barnard, Zenith’s head of forecasting and director of global intelligence.
“The question then is how rapidly programmatic techniques will spread to other media. We will be keeping a close eye on developments in the US as a guide to likely developments in the rest of the world.”
