The use of programmatic channels for media investment is falling among advertisers but growing for agencies, according to IAB Europe’s latest ‘Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising’ report. The tenth annual edition of the study surveyed 254 respondents across 31 European countries, suggesting fluctuations in programmatic trading, but seemingly increases in overall programmatic investment.
The report does not measure actual spend, only attitudes towards programmatic buys, creating nuances in the data. For example, the proportion of agencies transacting more than 41 percent of their CTV buys programmatically fell from 47 percent in 2023 to 41 percent in 2024. However, 30 percent of agencies now buy more than 81 percent of CTV programmatically, presumably contributing a higher level of overall spend. The report suggests CTV therefore saw the “greatest rise” in programmatic investment.
For video and display, programmatic buys decreased among advertisers but increased for agencies, with 64 percent of agency video buys now transacted programmatically. In 2024, around one-third of the buy-side is transacting more than 81 percent of their video investments programmatically, according to IAB Europe.
Media quality remains a barrier to adoption
The apparent discrepencies could be partially explained by the report’s findings on advertisers’ operational models. In 2024, 44 percent of advertisers said they outsource their programmatic operations to agencies, up from 4 percent in 2023. So if programmatic adoption is higher among agencies, and advertisers are increasingly outsourcing their programmatic investments to agencies, overall programmatic investment increases.
However, 42 percent of advertisers said they were considering bringing programmatic trading in-house over the next 12 months, citing cost efficiencies as the main reason for having in-house operations.
The report also identified the key drivers for programmatic adoption, with 38 percent of advertisers citing the ability to discover audiences, and 33 percent of agencies claiming cost efficiencies. On the flip side, media quality was identified as the main barrier to programmatic adoption for both advertisers and agencies, noting concerns around MFA, fraud, brand safety, viewability and transparency. As a result, quality and media measurement were considered the most important metrics for agencies to evaluate their programmatically bought display campaigns.
IAB Europe further raised the demise of third-party cookies as a barrier to programmatic investment, due to the decreased addressability of programmatic inventory. The survey found that over 50 percent of advertisers do not consider their company prepared for third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome, which is effectively expected even without a decision from Google. This friction could be reduced by moves towards supply-side curation, suggested the report, offering increased scale for first-party data activation and cookieless solutions.
The use of first-party data is therefore on the rise on both the advertiser and agency front, although down slightly from 2023 levels. “First-party identifiers and contextual targeting stand out as the dominant preference for both finding new audiences and replacing the third-party cookie,” said the report.
Agencies report progress on sustainability
One area no longer considered a major barrier to programmatic investment was sustainability, which is increasingly becoming a focus in programmatic operations; 60 percent of advertisers and 83 percent of agencies said they were focused on achieving sustainable programmatic advertising.
But IAB Europe found “a rather abyssal divide” between advertisers and agencies in perceived levels of progress from their programmatic partners towards Net Zero emissions, with 20 percent of advertisers and 68 percent of agencies saying they had seen “some progress” towards the target. The report explained that advertisers assessing sustainability will be monitoring a wider range of inputs, compared to agencies only observing the media part of the funnel.
“It’s encouraging to see that, compared to last year, environmental sustainability is less of a barrier to programmatic investments and continues to be a focus for all media players,” said Emmanuel Josserand, Sr Dir, Brand, Agency and Industry Relations at FreeWheel. “There is a lot of great work being done and initiatives, such as the IAB Europe’s sustainability committees and working groups, and we should continue to engage in constructive dialogues and action plans, making sustainability a seamless part of our programmatic ecosystem. This willingness to make progress, despite challenges, will ultimately lead to a more sustainable future for all.”
