WARC report illustrates rise of programmatic buying

The latest report from the World Advertising Research Centre (The WARC Trends Toolkit) shows that publishers’ investment in programmatic buying is rising rapidly. “Publishers are opening up more of their inventory to automated buying systems and brands are finding a growing range of uses for this type of media trading,” says the report.

According to WARC, key worries for publishers where programmatic buying is concerned, are the viewability of online ads and caution about losing control of where and ad is seen. The report also adheres to the fact that programmatic puts a greater focus on how brands and agencies manage datasets. “The need for better data planning is driving major changes within client-side marketing teams and within the agency world,” it says.

The WARC report sources a Manga Global study, which estimated that 2013 spend via programmatic would be US$7.4bn in the US – a rise of 56 per cent versus 2012. According to Manga, this figure will grow to $16.9bn by 2017. It is clear that programmatic buying is here to stay, and those who are not investing in it should certainly be thinking about doing so.

At the FIPP World Congress in September 2013, Joelle Frijters from Improve Digital, The Netherlands, predicted that by 2016, 50 per cent of publishers’ digital revenue will be programmatic.

Download a sample copy of the WARC Trends Toolkit 2014. The report has been published in association with Deloitte.

Look out for the next edition of FIPP’s Magazine World (coming soon – subscribe now), which will look at how media owners are managing the change that has been brought about by programmatic buying.

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