• by Larissa Faw , November 19, 2017

Two-thirds of the world’s digital display advertising (67%) will be traded programmatically by 2019, worth $84.9 billion, according to Publicis Groupe Zenith’s latest report, Programmatic Marketing Forecasts. 

Programmatic ad sales are growing at an annual average rate of 21% per year, according to the report. This year’s estimate is $57.5 billion.  

"Advertisers need to understand the it won’t be long before digital display is 100% programmatic, and that some of what we consider ‘traditional media’ will follow fairly shortly," says Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting and director of global intelligence, Zenith.  

The U.S. is driving this growth, increasing its percentage of display that will be traded programmatically this year from 78% to 83.6% in 2019, above the global average.  

The U.S. is also pioneering the shift of programmatic from Internet to “traditional,” media, such as TV, radio and out-of-home; programmatic spend in these areas represented 6% of the total, and is predicted to reach 13%, or $13 billion by 2019. 

"Channels more classically defined as TV and out-of-home will take on entirely new connotations and provide a new level of sophistication and utility to marketers," says Sean Reardon, chief executive officer, U.S., Zenith.  

Programmatic trading is most advanced in three English-speaking markets: Canada (81%), the U.S. (78%) and the UK (77%), followed by Denmark (70%) and France (63%). 

Although China is a digital leader in many ways - particularly in mobile- the country lags far behind in programmatic, with 29% of display traded programmatically this year compared to the world average of 59%.  

“We will be keeping a close eye on developments in the US as a guide to likely developments in the rest of the world,” says Barnard. “The most successful advertisers will understand how to use data and technology to make the most of programmatic marketing’s ability to target and personalize brand messaging. The question then is how rapidly programmatic techniques will spread to other media,” he says.