• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 13, 2017

Kantar Media, a WPP Group company, announced Thursday it will make programmatic advertising spend and occurrence data available to advertisers through its platforms. The service will initially launch in the United States and then roll out to other key markets.

The data, including digital ads monitored on display, mobile and online video platforms, will give advertisers details into digital ad buying channels. They include mediator and deployment-chain information for ad impressions and spend for digital ads purchased through programmatic channels.

The mediator data, from companies like Google DoubleClick, and deployment-chain data, show how the inventory was sold and by whom. Experts say this is a critical element to provide transparency. It ensures the same inventory doesn't get sold to advertisers two or three times. Without seeing the deployment chain, advertisers would have no frame of reference.

“To reach today’s consumers, media buyers and sellers must plan, execute and measure campaigns on a cross-platform basis," stated Manish Bhatia, North American CEO, Kantar Media.

The programmatic data will expand Kantar Media’s current services, which include mobile web and applications, online video, paid search, display advertising, digital promotions, geotargeted and local ads, social-owned media, and broadcast syncing and verification.

The news comes at a precarious time for programmatic ad buying.

This week, MediaRadar released data suggesting programmatic ad buying declined 12% in the first quarter of 2017 versus Q1 2016. Yet in April, eMarkeker forecast nearly four out of every five U.S. digital display dollars will transact programmatically this year, amounting to $32.5 billion.

Programmatic TV ad spend alone is expected to grow 75.7% to $1.13 billion in 2017, representing 1.6% of total U.S. TV ad spend. Next year, programmatic TV advertising will grow another 85.2% to $2.09 billion. That figure will reach nearly $4 billion by 2019.