Media Buying

In 2019, for the first time, UK adults spent more time with digital media than with traditional media.

Next year, for the first time, programmatic ad spending on private marketplaces (PMP) will surpass that on open exchanges. PMPs—a subset of real-time bidding (RTB) in which some sort of private deal exists between a publisher or a small group of publishers and select ad buyers—will see double-digit growth throughout the forecast period. Growth in PMP ad spending will outpace that of the open markets by about 3 to 1 in 2020 and beyond.

Mobile dethroned TV in 2019 as the channel where US adults spent the most time. While it may be a symbolic threshold for now, it’s still notable that the average US adult spent 3 hours, 43 minutes (3:43) on their mobile devices in 2019, compared with the average 3:35 spent watching TV. As recently as 2016, US adults watched nearly an hour more of TV than they spent on their smartphones and tablets (4:05 vs. 3:08).

The ad tech world may feel targeted (pun intended) by privacy-related scrutiny in the press, but the fees earned by the ecosystem of partners that facilitate programmatic display transactions in the US were up almost 20% this year.

The first primary contests for the Democratic presidential nomination are not happening until February 2020, but the heat is already on the biggest digital ad sellers to restrict what they allow political and issue-oriented advertisers to do.

We couldn’t have been more correct in late 2018 when we predicted that privacy concerns would snowball in 2019, creating greater challenges for digital marketers with regard to audience identification, targeting and tracking.

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.

Netflix and YouTube may be the video platforms US adults are watching most, but their days at the top may be numbered. New services such as Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV+ will fragment digital video viewing time even further. According to our first forecast on time spent watching Netflix and YouTube, both platforms will see their share of daily video time drop in the coming years.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch and vice president of content studio Paul Verna talk about Uber testing ad displays for its cars, YouTube attempting to invite more edgier advertising, Netflix making deals to extend its reach, Plex launching a free, ad-supported streaming service, Americans tell us their favorite Thanksgiving pie flavor, and more.

Connected TV (CTV) ad buyers must consider how CTV purchases factor into their broader digital and TV campaigns. Figuring out how to best plan, buy and measure CTV ads is becoming more consequential as more money flows into this area.