71% of digital ad spending in China will be traded programmatically by 2019. The internet giants BAT controlled around 80% of programmatic buying.
The programmatic digital display ad spending in China was expected to grow by 33.1% to 208.55 billion yuan (US$30.86bn) by 2019, accounting for 71% of overall spending on the digital display ad. The portion is to hit 75% by 2020, according to the report from eMarketer.
Currently, around 80% of digital display ad spending traded programmatically via the so-called BAT companies Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu. However, the status quo could be changed as more and more small and medium-sized companies start to establish their own platforms for programmatic buying.
Quick Look: Marketing in China 2019
The digital video ad, especially the short video, has greatly pushed advertisers to place ads in programmatic. 2019 is estimated to see 50%, or 44.64 billion yuan (US$6.6bn) of digital video ad spending transacted programmatically.
Though China’s ad spending in programmatic still lagged behind that of the U.S., the gap has been narrowed. By comparison, the programmatic digital display ad spending in the U.S. is going to increase by more than 21% to US$57.35bn by 2019, representing 84.5% of total digital display ad spending.