• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, July 20, 2016

A new study by WideOrbit finds that 73% of media buyers expect to spend up to half of their TV advertising budgets on programmatic TV in 2017. In fact, the percentage of ad buyers who plan to spend more than 5% of their TV budgets on programmatic will jump from 22% this year, to 64% in 2017. The ad-tech firm said that the increases will be generated by shifting spending to programmatic TV from other media, including digital video.

The findings are based on a March survey of 215 media buyers’ attitudes about programmatic TV, how they plan to use it, and its potential impact on their overall media strategy.

Among the survey’s highlights:

• An overwhelming majority of those polled, 93%, said it was important to buy TV and digital video together. While programmatic is becoming mainstream for purchasing digital advertising, ad buyers are just starting to use it for TV. The survey found 89% of respondents use programmatic today to purchase digital display advertising, while less than half currently use it for TV.

• The primary reason ad buyers gave for programmatic TV adoption was greater precision in ad targeting, with 58% saying that improved targeting is the most important benefit of programmatic TV.

• Programmatic TV is viewed by buyers as a way to run across screens and increase the impact of campaigns. More than two-thirds of ad buyers (68%) said they will use programmatic TV to extend audience reach. Respondents also expressed interest in learning how TV and digital video campaigns work together (58%) and amplifying digital campaigns with TV (38%).

• While there is near-unanimity that TV and digital video are converging, campaign success will be defined by digital metrics. Buyers plan to use a variety of digital performance metrics to evaluate programmatic TV ad performance.

• Respondents were almost evenly split between the top four answers for what was the most important metric: brand lift, increased purchase intent, better media efficiency and improved direct response metrics. Twenty percent said brand lift is the most important metric; 18%, increased purchase intent; 17% better media efficiency; 17% better DR metrics; 10% incremental audience reach; 7% brand recall; 6% don’t know, and 5% other.

"This study shows that ad buyers are planning to dedicate more of their overall budgets to programmatic TV,” Eric Mathewson, founder and CEO, WideOrbit, told Real-Time Daily via email. "Eight years ago, there was no such thing as programmatic digital. Now fully two-thirds of ad buyers use programmatic in the normal course of business to purchase many different flavors of digital advertising. Even if programmatic TV doesn't follow that same explosive growth trajectory, this research shows very plainly that it will be a significant portion of how all TV spots are purchased in the very near future.”