AT&T, American Express & Toyota are top global real-time-bid spenders, while BSkyB, Tesco and TalkTalk the biggest spenders in the UK, according to new data. Digital advertising technology company Rubicon Project has launched its quarterly global Marketplace Report.
Top advertisers spending through real-time bidding included AT&T, American Express and Toyota. AT&T also topped the list for the U.S. market, but on that list American Express came fourth, after Toyota and Sprint.
In September, according to comScore, Rubicon Project’s REVV platform reached 96.9% of the U.S. Internet audience — providing buyers with the largest marketplace for quality inventory.
As the largest reach platform in the digital advertising industry, REVV’s figures provide an accurate representation for the rapidly growing real-time-bidding market.
The study also shows that the top five RTB categories around the world — the ones in which the most money is spent via RTB — are, in order, Technology & Computing, Personal Finance, Travel, Shopping and Automotive.
UK data
In the UK, RTB advertising spend on Arts and Entertainment grew by 37% in Q3 making it the fourth largest category, and shopping was up by 26% to be the fifth largest category. BSkyB leads the field as the largest investor in advertising via RTB, followed by Tesco, TalkTalk, BT – which reduced investment by 23% compared with last quarter – and 02.
Jay Stevens, VP and General Manager, International, Rubicon Project, explains, ‘In the UK, programmatic trading is increasingly popular with brand who need to reach audiences at scale, such as the telcos and major supermarkets, alongside BT whose RTB investment complimented their Olympic sponsorship. We have also seen a rise in entertainment, with Netflix increasing spend quarter-on-quarter using targeting to reach householder.’
“The RTB market is expected to reach $7 billion in the next five years in North America alone. The world’s biggest brands are using automated ad purchasing to more efficiently reach their target audiences across the world’s most premium web publishers,” said Frank Addante, founder and CEO of Rubicon Project. “As such, we’re fuelling this market growth by enabling a single access point to the largest reaching marketplace of comScore 500 publishers who have installed Rubicon Project’s real time trading platform, REVV, to automate and optimize their ad sales operations.”
Among the report’s notable rankings:
• Global RTB spending on the category of “news” dropped nearly 45% from the second quarter to the third.
• Global RTB spending on the category of “careers” rose faster than any other category — nearly 39%.
• The publishing vertical “shopping” leapt five places from the second quarter, pushing itself to #3.
• Toyota Motor Corp., whose RTB spend in the U.S. finished 10th in the second quarter, surged to #2 for Q3 — a rise of 8 places.
The report also features RTB spending trends in Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the U.K.
The full report is available for free download here