Media Buying

Forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom joins host Nicole Perrin to talk takeaways about Alphabet's Q4 earnings, which revealed YouTube ad revenues and Cloud revenues as line items for the first time. They also discuss how the largest digital ad seller is facing an investigation into its dominant market position.

US digital political ad spending will hit a record high for the 2019/2020 political cycle, crossing the $1 billion mark for the first time ($1.34 billion), as a larger number of highly engaged voters are expected to donate to the candidates of their choice in this year’s presidential race.

eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman and vice president of content studio Paul Verna discuss the best and worst Super Bowl ads and whether they achieved their marketing objectives. They also talk about how many people tuned in to the game, how much advertisers spent and the most popular halftime show ever. They then examine Quibi's launch campaign, solo TV viewing and how much returns are costing retail.

As more people watch video content on their mobile devices, the nature of mobile video monetization is changing. This is particularly the case for programmatic advertising, which we define as an automated, technology-driven method of buying, selling or fulfilling digital display ad placements. Overall, mobile video ads sold programmatically generated $19.93 billion in revenues in 2019 in the US and will generate $24.87 billion in 2020.

For years, advertisers and their partners have complained about a lack of transparency in programmatic transactions, leaving them open to a number of problems including outright fraud. Jeremy Steinberg, global head of ecosystem at MediaMath, joins host Nicole Perrin to discuss why accountability is still a challenge and how the supply chain can come together to create better, more mature programmatic markets.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom and principal analyst Nicole Perrin talk about the US political ad spending landscape. How much money is being spent, where and why? They then discuss smartphone voting, consumer attitudes on privacy jargon and how Google can profit from government search warrants.

The role of political advertising in social media will be a key discussion topic in 2020—an easy prediction to make. Kantar Media expects that US digital political ad spending will reach $1.2 billion this year, and we believe the social platforms that continue accepting political advertisers will be major beneficiaries of that spending.

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.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver and vice president of research Jennifer Pearson discuss children's behavior online, the screen time stigma and YouTube child policy changes. Then, junior analyst Blake Droesch addresses questions about a TikTok sale, Facebook's stance on political ads and a new way to limit who can reply to your tweets.

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).

Despite the acceleration of cord-cutting, the demand for TV advertising remains strong. In 2019, that demand was reflected in increased ad prices and a growing appetite for targeted TV ads.

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.

Marketers have embraced location data for several reasons. It can help personalize experiences for customers, better isolate customer paths to purchase, create better customer segments, and identify opportune moments to target potential clients. But new restrictions on collecting location data will make it more costly for advertisers in 2020.

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.

For brands and retailers in some categories, Amazon is a significant channel for ecommerce sales. And that often means paying for prime placement on Amazon properties, including in search results. We estimate Amazon will have earned 72% of its $9.85 billion in net US digital ad revenues from search ads in 2019.

eMarketer principal analyst Yory Wurmser joins host Nicole Perrin to discuss eMarketer’s latest estimates of spending on mobile ads in the US. They break down our forecast to explain where the nearly $100 billion in US mobile ad outlays this year actually goes.

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.

Asia-Pacific is home to some of the world's fastest-growing and most dynamic economies, but the current US-China trade war and other geopolitical factors are threatening the regions' economic vitality and are impacting digital ad spend.

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.