A Primer on Programmatic Advertising

By 2016 the explosion of digital advertising was a global phenomenon. And many industry observers believed that programmatic advertising, that is digital advertising allocated through automated marketing systems, was the future of digital advertising. In a programmatic advertising environment, buyers and sellers of online (digital) advertising connected over an exchange buying and selling available inventory. For advertisers, programmatic marketing offered the promise of less costly and more targeted and effective placements. This Primer discusses the programmatic advertising eco-system and the challenges inherent in negotiating this system (e.g., the persistence of ad blocking and the threat of fraud)—as well as future growth opportunities for programmatic advertising.