While smartphone use is always on the rise, and increasing number of consumers are getting their content from different sources, which include computers, tablets, and mobile devices. So, it’s important for brands to reach out through all of them. To this end, Adweek reports that 2016 will be the year when targeting one specific kind of device will be out, replaced by cross-device programmatic advertising.
Internet advertising reached an all-time high of $50 billion in 2014, with one-fifth ($10.1 billion) made up of programmatic ad revenue. That trend isn’t likely to go down anytime soon, especially as programmatic video continues to grow across different channels. To put things into perspective, eMarketer predicts that programmatic display ad spending will grow to $21.55 billion in 2016, and hit $26.78 billion in 2017.
Businesses like the Red Roof Inn hotel chain are already investing heavily in cross-device advertising, doubling its ad spend to 40 percent this year. Kevin Scholl, Red Roof Inn’s digital marketing director states, “it’s about really maximizing our spend to make sure the audience we’re engaging with are people we know are going to have a need and will want to get served up an ad for one of our properties.”
Red Roof Inn joins brands like Project Rubicon, the mobile game publisher Zynga, and the car-sharing company Zipcar, in increasing its cross-device budget this year. It wouldn’t be surprising if more companies followed suit in marketing toward the variety of screens consumers have at their disposal.
