Ian leads product development for LiveRamp’s identity solutions in the programmatic ecosystem. He is a six-year veteran of LiveRamp and previously developed investment research products at Morningstar, Inc. He holds a BA in History from Washington University in St. Louis.

Exclusive Video Webinar for eMarketer PRO Subscribers

Self-Serve Programmatic. Advertisers and agencies can only create and manage YouTube campaigns and bid on YouTube inventory through Google platforms, including Google Ads, formerly AdWords, or its demand-side platform (DSP) Display & Video 360.

Previously, programmatic publishers used an approach called waterfalling that passed bids sequentially from one exchange to the next. The way publishers and advertisers approach programmatic has changed significantly since header bidding debuted. Here are five charts about the state of header bidding. How Common Is Header Bidding?

Amazon makes most of its digital ad revenues from search. But it’s done a lot to build out a display business as well, and that’s where eMarketer expects growth to be fastest in the coming years.

Our November 2019 update, “UK Programmatic Digital Display Ad Spending: Growth Underpinned by Social Spend and Programmatic Direct,” noted that GDPR hadn’t been much of a growth inhibitor in terms of programmatic display ad spending, once the initial disruption was past—though it had helped steer more euros to private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic direct deals.

And with US advertisers expected to spend more than four of every five digital display ad dollars this year via programmatic channels, it’s only logical publishers would want to capitalize on that spending. First-generation programmatic setups required the publisher’s ad server to check direct-sold deals or partnerships before making inventory available to programmatic buyers and ad exchanges.

Fifty-seven percent of digital advertisers are planning to increase their ad spend in H1 2021, and connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT), in particular, are expected to see gains, according to a recent Verizon Media study.

This is accomplished through utilizing algorithms that selectively bid on impressions that the marketer has the best chance of winning in programmatic auctions. This helps DSPs reduce their infrastructure costs by lowering the burden on their servers, and it reduces the probability of bidding on duplicative inventory.

The waterfall has faded in importance on the web, but it’s still a large part of in-app programmatic due to greater technological challenges, primarily around reconciling different ad network software development kits (SDKs), which are necessary to load ads in apps.

The benefits for direct-to-consumer teams

Three in four leading publishers have implemented ads.txt, one of the most important recent developments in programmatic ad fraud mitigation.

Mobile’s share of US programmatic digital display ad spending will increase, thanks to overall market trends and the continued influence of players like Facebook and Google, who are both mobile- and programmatic-centric. The continued growth of social advertising (again, largely mobile and programmatic in nature) will also drive mobile programmatic investment.

The report highlights the current state of header bidding and the most common ways these programmatic deals deliver higher CPMs for publishers. The report also explores how header bidding has changed the rules of programmatic auctions—and highlights what advertisers need to know now. Not sure if your company subscribes? You can find out here.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enacted in May 2018, was supposed to cause a huge backlash against programmatic trading in the UK. It was going to bring heightened awareness of privacy among consumers and more scrutiny of ad tech than ever before. Marketers were going to become wary of playing “fast and loose” with consumer data. Of course, there have been varying degrees of truth in those statements, and while initial effects were felt, the longer-term impact on programmatic ad spend has not been substantial.

Rather than blindly relying on third-party brand safety mechanisms baked into programmatic exchanges, brands should look at other indicators for quality and develop direct relationships with publishers.

“Mobile as a standalone did receive less investment,” said Greg Anderson, managing director of media group at programmatic media platform Xaxis. “We did see advertisers start to gravitate more toward omnichannel approaches. Including mobile as a device in conjunction with things like desktop and in the cases when they're running video, even connected TV.”.