• by Felicia Greiff , December 9, 2015

Forrester Research revisited a 2014 study to check in on the state of media buying. The results: mobile programmatic is on fire, and lack of transparency in media buying has led some to cut out the middlemen (trading desks).

Highlights include:

• More than half of the marketers Forrester surveyed in 2014 were not familiar enough with programmatic to use it. Now, more than 43% of marketers say they use multiple DSPs.
• Online display was the most common use for programmatic in 2014 at 77%, compared to 36% for mobile. Now, 89% of marketers confirmed they used DSP to purchase mobile display.
• About half of the marketers surveyed in 2014 were concerned about lack of transparency. In 2015, 28% of marketers surveyed said they involved agencies in their programmatic buying.

Jim Nail, principal analyst, Forrester, said in an email that he’s most excited about the shift to audience buying (another hot topic Forrester covered in a previous report) and the companion developments in cross-screen individual identification.

“Look for media buying to evolve as these capabilities mature,” Nail said. “Buyers will focus on reaching their target, with less regard to the program or device, and pace the delivery of the campaign to optimize the ratio of reach and frequency.”

For the report, Forrester updated last year’s “Media Buying’s Evolution Challenges Marketers,” a survey of more than 150 senior marketers done with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and supplemented it with its Q1 2015 Demand-Side Platform Wave Online Survey.