SpotX’s data revealed that the portion of overall ad budgets spent with OTT inventory owners increased from 8% in October 2016 to reach more than 26% of total spend for October 2017. This equates to nearly 18X year-on-year growth in advertiser dollars spent on OTT inventory.

As the holiday ad spend push continues, OTT is expected to account for around 30% of video ad spend by the end of 2017, pointing to a macro-level growth trend that shows budgets adjusting in favour of OTT streams as consumers increasingly view content across devices.

SpotX considers the OTT video category to include broadcast-quality inventory from TV networks, pay-TV providers and other live, linear and video-on-demand (VOD) streaming services delivered via connected TV devices as well as desktop and mobile screens.

“We’ve seen DSP partners increasing their focus on OTT in response to a shift in consumption habits,” said Kelly McMahon, VP, Global Demand Operations, SpotX. “By making addressable OTT inventory available to buyers through their platforms, they’re placing themselves ahead of the curve in terms of innovation and enabling advertisers to reach audiences across multiple screens at scale.”

Of the 65+ DSPs buying through SpotX’s platform, Adobe Advertising Cloud, dataxu, The Trade Desk, VideoAmp and ZypMedia are leading growth as the top platforms transacting on OTT inventory. Since January, their collective daily spend on the category has grown by more than 675%.

“The key to buying across video channels, including OTT audiences, is taking a holistic view of the data that can be made available; specifically: linking consumption behaviour, or what people watch, to digital activities, or what they do online, along with ad exposure data,” said Jay Prasad, chief strategy officer, VideoAmp. “As a purpose-built platform for the converging linear and digital worlds, we are enabling these data assets to work in concert to deliver better scale and efficiency for advertisers.”

Adam Lowy, head, advertising sales, Sling TV, added: “Streaming live TV is now mainstream behaviour, opening the door for advertisers to capture today’s young, affluent, hard-to-reach consumers who aren’t subscribing to traditional cable TV.”