This FAQ covers the fundamentals of programmatic advertising and the trends shaping the market in 2026.

MFA sites still plague open web exchanges: AI allows bad actors to rapidly produce fraudulent websites and use bots to drum up fake pageviews, muddying the ad ecosystem.

Advertisers won’t have to quit third-party cookies cold turkey, but long-standing market dynamics around access to quality data aren’t going anywhere.

Programmatic will account for more than 9 in 10 display ad dollars this year. How it fares as the last legacy identifiers die out will make or break the future of digital advertising.

Fueled by connected TV, programmatic video has expanded significantly. However, there remain concerns over difficulties with cross-platform measurement, ad fraud, and the lack of uniform standards.

Connected TV and programmatic video ad spending continues to exceed expectations in the US.

Connected TV ad spending continues to expand substantially.

During a year where investments in most advertising channels shrunk or stalled, connected TV ad spending is poised to keep growing.

Digital ad fraud is still a major problem in the programmatic ecosystem, with advertiser losses estimated in the billions of dollars annually. This report explores how advertisers, publishers and partners are protecting themselves.

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.

Advertisers are making significant investments in connected TV as the TV landscape becomes more fragmented.

Advertisers are embracing the popularity of connected TV by allocating more money to streaming platforms.

Ad dollars and viewers are pouring into digital video platforms as the TV industry continues to lose subscribers.

With viewers, content and ad dollars continuing to flow to digital platforms, it is more important than ever to adopt best practices in video and TV advertising, and to coordinate them across the entire device spectrum.

In a poll conducted by ad measurement firm Integral Ad Science (IAS), 69.0% of agency executives say that fraud is the biggest hindrance to ad budget growth, compared with more than half (52.6%) of brand professionals who said the same.

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

Over-the-top video inventory demand is very strong, but the supply of impressions is limited. This has created an opportunity for fraudsters to trick advertisers into buying inventory that does not really exist.

Will the duopoly dominate in 2019? Will consumer privacy concerns challenge marketers’ efforts? This report explores these digital display trends and more.