Programmatic ad value will reach $84.9 billion in 2019, according to new forecasts by Zenith. Growing at an average rate of 21 percent a year, the company says it won’t be long before the global display market is fully programmatic.

Zenith has released its Programmatic Marketing Forecasts that examine the state of ad trading across the world. Two-thirds (67 percent) of the world’s digital display advertising will be traded programmatically by 2019, the company predicts, compared to 59 percent in 2017.

Canada, the US and the UK are hosts to the most advanced programmatic trading, Zenith observed. A majority of digital display advertising will be traded programmatically in these countries in 2019 at 81 percent, 78 percent and 77 percent, respectively.

The US has the largest programmatic market, accounting for 57 percent of the global total and valued at $32.6 billion. China is a distant second at $5.3 billion and accounts for 29 percent of programmatic digital display advertising worldwide.

This is a bit less than forecasts from eMarketer, which places total programmatic ad spend around $46 billion in the US this year. Emarketer also estimates that 82.5, not 78 percent, of digital ads in the US are purchased through automatic channels.

Programmatic ad spending is common among digital channels but predicted to reach $5.6 billion this year across television, radio, cinema outdoor in the US. This will represent six percent of the total ad expenditure but is expected to rise to $13 billion in 2019.

“We will be keeping a close eye on developments in the US as a guide to likely developments in the rest of the world,” noted Jonathan Barnard, Zenith’s head of forecasting and director of global intelligence.

Roku launched its Audience Marketplace in June, which quickly attracted media giants like Fox, Turner and Viacom. During the company’s Q2 earnings call, Roku CFO Steve Louden said that data-driven selling and programmatic are the future of TV, both OTT and traditional.

Native programmatic ad buying is helping to drive growth, but brands are still concerned about brand safety, i.e. where those ads appear. For this reason, many brands are taking programmatic in-house.

According to recent data by the IAB Data Center of Excellence, these reasons vary beyond safety. Forty-four percent of respondents hoped to improve ROI tracking and 34 percent wanting better cost efficiency. Additionally, 44 percent predicted both better audience targeting and more effective campaigns as rewards for bringing programmatic in-house.