"Despite all the complications surrounding programmatic and the
complexity of the industry, it continues to grow at faster than
expected rates each quarter," said eMarketer vice president Clark
Fredricksen in an interview with Ad Age. "It really speaks to the
fact that marketers have overcome some of their hesitation about
adopting such complex technology."
eMarketer releases new ad spend estimates quarterly and, after a
slight downward revision in May, its programmatic numbers have
spiked over the past two quarters. Mr. Fredricksen said that this
quarter's upward revision was due to overall growth in digital
display advertising and figures from multiple studies suggesting an
advancing adoption of programmatic buying. Several studies were
named by eMarketer in the report including those from Magna Global, JMP Securities and
IDC.
Impact of Facebook
While this year's programmatic surge has largely been documented,
eMarketer revised its 2014 forecast upward as well. Next year, the
firm expects programmatic spending to increase another 38.4%, up
from the 35.8% it estimated in August. Mr. Fredricksen said
eMarketer expects programmatic spending next year to get a boost
from the efforts of larger companies such as Facebook and
Twitter.
"The roll out of FBX has big implications for the growth of
programmatic," Mr. Fredricksen said. The deployment of significant
resources by Facebook and others to educate marketers about
programmatic may form a rising tide lifting all boats, he said. The
education, Mr. Fredricksen explained, "may enable other publishes
to sell using this technology to those same advertisers now, where
before they weren't able to."
For publishers, the debate around whether programmatic is good
or bad may soon be obsolete. "Real time bidding is certainly here,"
said Mr. Fredricksen, noting that it's arrived with mixed results
for publishers. Either way, programmatic is now a fact of life for
them, and having a defined approach to the medium will likely grow
only more important with time.
