Programmatic advertising’s hold on digital display advertising continues to grow, as one company rests its initial public offering on what market watchers expect will only continue to expand.
Irvine-based advertising software provider Viant Technology Inc. filed for a $150 million IPO earlier this month; see page 1 for more.
Viant’s growth has come with advertisers’ expanding reliance on tools automating the ad buying and optimization processes for digital display campaigns, or “programmatic advertising.”
“We believe the advertising industry is still in the early stages of a shift to programmatic advertising,” the company said in its IPO filing. “The ability to transact through real-time-bidding platforms has evolved beyond banner advertising to be used across a wide range of advertising channels and formats, including desktop, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboards.”
This has been a big business for a while now, with research firm eMarketer in 2019 projecting programmatic advertising will account for nearly 8% of digital display advertising dollars this year, which equates to $81 billion.
Notably, a good chunk, or two-thirds of that spend, will go to mobile.
Next year programmatic advertising domestically is projected to grow to $140 billion, eMarketer said.
That market’s dominated by Facebook and Google, which make up more than half of the total programmatic display dollars. Projections from eMarketer call for the pair’s market hold to increase slightly this year.
