Dmexco – the Mecca of ad-tech, rose like the Phoenix and disappeared after two days of media and marketing madness. Over 50,000 executives, marketers and techies raided Cologne, Germany, to pitch, connect and discover the latest and greatest in digital marketing and advertising. Our team at Cedato braved the media stampedes and pub crawls to come back and report directly from the floor about…

• What trends are affecting video advertising?
  
• How will they impact digital marketing next year?
  
• And what surprises did we discover along the way?

The normalization of programmatic video

Programmatic video trended heavily at Dmexco this year. The programmatic video market is climbing towards critical mass, faster than imagined and is reshaping the video advertising landscape.  Programmatic video, which grew by 95% in 2015, now accounts for almost a quarter of online video ad spend. At Cedato we predict that the growth phase will accelerate, given the rising revenues. We anticipate that it will become the new default for buying and selling video advertising

 The evolution of the new native video and its programmatic opportunities
Native video and the future of content were big talking points at Dmexco 2016. New native video, in particular outstream video, was strongly linked to programmatic opportunities. Considered the most media friendly format, outstream video is fast becoming the go-to choice for monetization. In mobile alone, outstream is fast becoming mainstream and the ‘weapon of choice’ for contending with ad blocking.

The surprisingly long journey awaiting motion content before it becomes mainstream
There were at least 13 sessions covering video this year, ranging from discussions on video header bidding to video and big data. Although a few booth stands braved the new motion content technologies, there was surprisingly little offered on Virtual Reality and 360 video. It looks like these new forms have a long way to go before they join mainstream ad technology. Until then the industry is inevitably occupied with more pressing issues affecting the day-to-day business of ad technology such as; ad blocking, fraud and how to harness programmatic video for monetization. So until next year, we will be working hard to solve the complexities of video marketing technology so that you can simply and safely continue with the business of video ads.