It has been an exciting year for the television industry from OTT and addressability to programmatic TV and local broadcast markets. As the year comes to a close, it’s that time again for predictions to unfold and to reflect on the industry’s progression, success, and obstacles within the past year. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Shereta Williams (pictured below), president, Videa lays down her predictions for the future of programmatic TV.

Programmatic TV is an intriguing topic for speculation because this technology is rapidly changing and evolving ad buying as we know it. The buzz around the future of programmatic TV continues to be at the forefront of technology conversations and 2017 stands to be a pivotal year with forecasts such as eMarketer’s predicting that programmatic TV spending will likely see a significant jump.

According to eMarketer, this year, programmatic spending will increase by 127.8% to USD$710m (£486m) and programmatic spending on TV ads will more than double to USD$2.16bn (£1.48bn) in 2017. The research firm also predicts that it will continue to increase to nearly USD$4.4bn (£3bn) by 2018 and that programmatic TV ad spending is expected to account for 6% of TV ad spending by 2018. With the adoption of programmatic TV accelerating and money continuing to flow in the television industry from the investment community, the future of TV appears to be a bright one as the programmatic TV space continues to change and evolve.

Here are some predictions of what we can expect to see out of the TV industry during the next year and beyond.

Nielsen, comScore, and other traditional measurement companies will include more spending, behavioural and psychographic data

Traditional measurement companies, such as Nielsen and comScore, will include more spending, behavioural and psychographic data, in addition to demographic and viewing data. In 2017, there also will be new metric techniques available to measure and value audiences; however, providers of traditional types of data, like Nielsen, will not go away, but be improved and enhanced.

Addressability will grow 

Shereta Williams, President, Videa

Addressability will continue to evolve and will benefit the cable industry more than broadcast. Cox and all of the MVPDs will continue to aggressively invest in addressable TV so they can do one-to-one marketing at a household level. Broadcasters will continue to invest towards ATSC 3.0 and partner with Smart TV providers so they can offer their own addressable solutions. Last month, AT&T announced that it would buy Time Warner, a deal which is a strong example of how addressability is evolving and growing. In short, the industry has gone from one behemoth to two.

The OTT market will evolve

The OTT market will continue to develop and progress. As a result, there will be an increasing number of people watching ads not linearly through the primary feed but non-linearly through an OTT app or service such as Hulu. In other words, the viewing of television and video content in non-traditional ways will continue to accelerate.

More local business will be transacted on CPM 

Common goals for programmatic sales will also evolve as scaled inventory is available and marketers and publishers start to agree on new guidelines of engagement for this sales channel. This could include different guidelines around preemptions, payment terms and posting rates. Additionally, more local business will be transacted on CPM, which will simplify some of the issues on rules and delivery.

Digital DSPs will struggle as the revenue model continues to come under pressure 

Digital DSPs will continue to struggle as the revenue model continues to come under pressure and transparency in both measurement and pricing progresses. We have already started to see this with digital campaigns significantly under-delivering and price arbitrage of premium video content moving dollars back to TV. 

We expect that the above industry predictions and trends will be some of the major themes in the both the television and programmatic TV industries in 2017. The future of TV appears to be a bright one for the year ahead and for its future.