Executive Summary

Cries for greater transparency and advertising accountability got louder in 2018. In 2019, the call to arms must be answered. Marketers failing to do so won’t just be causing a further rift between themselves and their customers—they’ll be setting themselves up for failure.

What will consumer demands for privacy and data control mean for marketers in 2019?

Marketers are going to have to prepare for impending regulation and heightened privacy concerns, whether they want to or not. This will mean scrutinizing their data collection practices and making sure they are meeting regulatory requirements and consumer expectations.

Will the rollout of app-ads.txt happen in 2019?

It will, but adoption of the in-app version of ads.txt—a text file on publishers’ sites that lists vendors with permission to sell inventory—won’t flow to every corner, nor will it solve all the ad fraud woes that currently plague mobile app advertising.

Is the identity graph in trouble?

In some ways, yes. Apple’s ITP 2.0, continued ad avoidance, rises in falsified audience data sets and the California Consumer Privacy Act are all pulling at the strings of this fragile web.

Will it be harder for advertisers to move dollars from TV to digital?

Actually, it will become easier, thanks to mergers and acquisitions over the past year and the growing efforts of big networks and broadcasters to iron out measurement inconsistencies between TV and digital. However, don’t expect frequency capping issues to go away any time soon.

Will the duopoly’s hold finally start to dwindle?

No. In spite of mounting frustration and distrust from consumers and marketers, the latter will not turn away from the biggest players in the digital ad space.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report covers nine trends we expect to affect the digital display advertising space this year.

KEY STAT: The duopoly will still dominate digital display advertising, accounting for slightly more than half of all US digital display ad dollars this year.