A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that global digital advertising spend across mobile, wearable and online devices will exceed $285 billion by 2020, up from an estimated $160 billion in 2016. This will be driven by an average annual growth of 22% in mobile and wearable advertising spend, as brands and retailers continue to invest in mobile consumer engagement.

The new research found that despite the rising adoption of ad blockers, better audience targeting will drive higher click through rates and increase publisher revenues. Research author Sam Barker said: “Publishers, such as Facebook, are utilising their unprecedented audience knowledge to offer advertisers highly accurate targeting, thereby increasing the click through rates that advertisers are witnessing now.”

He added that publishers who are able to offer the most efficient targeting are set to become the most popular amongst advertisers. The Juniper Research report highlighted that increased ad revenues will be further driven by faster real time bidding processes from exchanges such as the Rubicon Project and Fiksu. By streamlining the bidding process, page load times are reduced – increasing the user experience.

Last year saw ad revenues from mobile platforms surpassing those from online platforms, offering publishers the opportunity to capitalize on a sector that is both growing and has a comparatively low adoption of mobile ad blockers. However, mobile ad blocking adoption is expected to increase over the next five years as users bring the benefits of the technology onto their mobile devices. The Juniper research also warned that publishers will have to contend with the introduction of network level ad blocking, currently being deployed by the UK mobile operator Three.