Digital advertising investment has increased in recent years, with automated contracting models, programmatic advertising, search engines and social networks standing out. In this context, and taking into account the significant increase in artificial intelligence, the aim of this study is to carry out a bibliometric study on programmatic advertising, to determine its evolution, as well as future lines of research. For the bibliometric analysis, the first search generated 987 articles. After going through the exclusion and inclusion process, these articles were analysed in the selection phase, according to a variety of criteria. A total of 179 articles (from 2000 to 2023) have been analysed in both WoS and Scopus using Biblioshiny. The analysis identified the following main themes: ‘artificial intelligence, digital advertising, sleeping giants, fake news, internet user, data protection, user privacy, real time, machine learning, social media’. Finally, this study suggests wider implications for industry and academia contributing to further scientific development in this field and that it can also be applied in the professional field. This study has allowed us to analyse articles in both WoS and Scopus, unified through the RStudio programme, and in this way has also allowed us to determine that although scientific production in this area has increased in the last 5 years, the rapid technological evolution and the irruption of generative artificial intelligence in the digital landscape, allows programmatic advertising to broaden its horizons and market niches.