As the number of screens and ad impressions continue to proliferate, advertising dollars are moving from traditional to digital environments at a staggering rate.

An important key to capturing share of the growing digital spend comes down to the ability for publishers to leverage real-time data, according to Forrester Consulting (www.forrester.com). The research group found that 65% of publishers report that they used SSP/exchange analytics data for critical operational decisions.

Further, the study found that 67% of publishers – large and small – believe that real-time data is important to their efforts, and 62% find that it leads to an increase in revenue, yet only 27% report receiving data in real-time. As publishers grow, their appetite for data and actionable insights increase too.

The study also found that the majority of larger publishers, with over 500 employees, experience challenges aggregating multiple sources of critical business data into one real-time data stream, especially as they are increasingly inundated with multiple types of data. More than half (56%) of large publishers say they are challenged by the inability to get a single view of multiple data sources while 59% say they are frustrated with disparate platforms and 54% with disparate metrics.

Additionally, the study found that only 24% of large publishers are very satisfied with their current competitive benchmarking capabilities. Adding transparency to ad inventory performance in real-time programmatic ad sales not only provides publishers with context within peer sets, but also creates a distinct advantage over competition.