• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 11, 2024

Although overall programmatic advertising deals continue to build -- up 15% year-over-year -- programmatic buying and selling of streaming advertising inventory still has a way to go, according to a new report from Comcast Advertising.

A recent Comcast report says only 21% of premium streaming advertising inventory -- estimated to be in the range of $20 billion to $25 billion per year -- is bought via programmatic advertising platforms.

Buying for live content events is 21% of all publishers' live content can be bought programmatically.

According to the report, a record number of advertising and programmatic impressions did air for this past summer’s Paris Olympics.

Comcast says independent programmatic demand growth has increased 24% year-over-year in the United States.

For all premium video inventory -- premium streaming, linear or others -- around 30% to 40% of ad deals come from programmatic purchasing, according to industry estimates.

Media executives say 53% of brands now consider “addressable” buying a “must-buy” -- up from 51% a year ago.

Pursuing better audience targeting for premium video shows that 57% come from behavioral audience targeting, and 43% from traditional demographic targeting.

Amid concerns over too much advertising messaging and higher frequency issues, 80% of buyers now consider more strongly “limited” advertising loads on premium video streaming platforms.

Comcast FreeWheel research says advertising pods of two minutes or less can improve brand impact and recall.

This story has been updated.