NEW YORK—A new study from Guideline indicates that In Q1 2024, large US advertisers expanded their overall ad spend by 7% compared to the year prior and that digital Media fueled the increase, growing by 18%. That marked the biggest quarterly growth since Q1 2022, Guideline reported.
Guideline measures advertising spend and pricing data by capturing actual agency media investment from all major holding companies and most major independents.
Programmatic buying channels were an important part of the growth, seeing spending up 33% in Q1 while direct-sold insertion orders were up 12%. Within Programmatic channels, advertisers increased spending 19% on Open Exchanges over Q1 '23, while they added 52% to Premium Programmatic budgets, with Private Marketplaces (PMP) growing at a faster rate than Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals.
In Q1'22, Premium exchange transactions constituted 32% of the Guideline Pool's Programmatic ad dollars compared to 44% in Q1'24.
In conjunction with the release of this data, Guideline also announced the availability of Programmatic Marketplace intelligence, providing marketers with a holistic view into the entire programmatic marketplace.
"Advertisers continue to shift dollars from open exchanges and into premium programmatic deals in search of top-quality inventory, better targeting options, and safe environments for their brands," said Alberto Leyes, head of product strategy, Data Solutions at Guideline. "As ad spend continues to proliferate across channels, the launch of our Programmatic Marketplace intelligence provides buyers and sellers with the transparent market view they need to trade in a growingly complex market."
The new Guideline report found that Digital Video has been driving advertisers' shift to Programmatic ad channels. In Q1'22, 28% of OTT traded programmatically, compared to 43% in Q1'24. By comparison, in Q1'22 advertisers bought 36% of video ads in short-form content, "Online Video" (OLV), and a similar share, 38%, in Q1'24. The three biggest-spending advertiser Product Category Groups in Digital in Q1'24 were Consumer Packaged Goods (+23%), Tech (+7%), Pharma (+23%).
Guideline's ad spend and pricing solutions power deep levels of reporting granularity for both the buy and sell sides, including visibility into Publishers and Product Categories, and enabling a wide range of use cases for media owners, agencies, consulting companies, brands and financial investors as they optimize their media trading operations and drive new business.
To learn more about Programmatic Marketplace Insights, visit guideline.ai.
