NEW DELHI: Even as the switch over to digital technology is beginning to show pace in India, digital video ad spend grew by 42 per cent over the past year to total $7.46 billion in 2015 in the United States for the sixth consecutive year.

Within the next four years, that number is expected to nearly double and reach over $13 billion by 2019, according to a report on 2015 US State of the Video Industry by Verizon’s AOLPlatforms.

According to the report, marketers are reprioritising traditional advertising budgets and adding dollars to digital video. TV budget growth is stagnating, with a sizeable portion of those dollars being reallocated to video advertising.

Mobile and video are converging, posing new opportunities and challenges to the industry. Overall mobile video advertising spend increased 18 per cent since 2014, but marketers say measurement remains a key pain point.

Almost 91 per cent of brands and agencies are buying video programmatically and continue to make larger investments into the technology year-over-year. Eighty-eight per cent of publishers claim they sell their video inventory programmatically, a noticeable 37 per cent leap from 2014.

Programmatic TV is gaining popularity as audience fragmentation hits an inflection point. Over the next year, 41 per cent of television buyers–a 3x increase since 2014–plan to rely on programmatic technology to make more strategic TV investments.

Advertisers and agencies devote over 30 per cent of their overall video budgets to branded video content. Brands intend to grow these investments 10 per cent in the next year.

AOL Platforms surveyed nearly 300 US brands, agencies and publishers to get a holistic view of the current state of video advertising.