• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, January 20, 2016

Advertisers looking for higher quality mobile inventory shifted spending into mobile private marketplaces (PMPs) during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. They increased weekly monetized impression volume by 45% from the start of the quarter through the week of Black Friday, signaling an alteration of media buying behavior.

The data comes from PubMatic’s Q4 2015 Quarterly Mobile Index report, which also predicts that buyers will exhibit similar behavior around tentpole events in the coming year, like the presidential election and the Summer Olympics.

PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel says that the data shows a fundamental shift in media-buying behaviors that is more than the normal cause/effect of major events having a positive influence on overall spending.

“Media buyers are not only utilizing PMPs to buy high-quality inventory at crucial times of the year, but they are also targeting consumers that are increasingly on mobile devices during major media and retail events,” says Goel, like Black Friday or sporting events.

The retail and technology sectors tended to be drivers in PMP spending. The increase in weekly PMP volume from the start of Q4 to the week of Black Friday was at 106% and 285% in retail and technology, respectively.

The market opportunity in PMPs is significant as well.

eMarketer estimates that ad spending on PMPs in the U.S. will increase from $80 million in 2013, to reach $3.65 billion this year. MAGNA GLOBAL projects that non-RTB programmatic spending, which includes PMP and automatic guaranteed, will rise to $7 billion by 2019.

The draw to PMPs is largely driven by the transparency with which they operate. They work well for supply and demand side alike, offering a familiar buying environment that provides the scale and immediacy of programmatic..

“PMPs are all the promises of programmatic direct, realized today,” says Goel. “We anticipate a lot more programmatic spending coming in 2016, as advertisers and agencies become more familiar with PMPs, and as more and more attractive inventory packages come to market from premium publishers.”