Data & Market Research March 17, 2026 • Updated: 9 November 2026

Online advertising
statistics 2026

50+ verified statistics on the online advertising market. From the size of the global ad market and digital spend in the US and Europe to channel shares, programmatic, mobile, privacy, retail media and the Dutch market. Compiled from WPP Media, dentsu, IAB, IAB Europe, VIA Nederland/Deloitte, Eurostat, Statcounter and company filings, every figure with a link to its source.

$1.3T

global advertising revenue expected in 2026 (+8.9%)

Source: WPP Media, 2026

68.7%

of all ad investment worldwide goes to digital in 2026

Source: dentsu, 2025

$294.6B

US internet advertising revenue in 2025 (+13.9%)

Source: IAB/PwC, 2026

€131.1B

digital ad spend in Europe in 2025 (+10.5%)

Source: IAB Europe, 2026

Statistics overview

Global advertising revenue is expected to reach $1.3 trillion in 2026, according to WPP Media, and dentsu estimates that 68.7% of all ad investment now goes to digital channels. But how exactly is that spend distributed? Which channels are growing fastest? And what do privacy developments mean for advertisers? For Dutch companies, how to compare channels side by side on cost per lead: read more about our performance marketing agency (in Dutch).

On this page you will find 50+ verified online advertising statistics, each linked to its source: WPP Media, dentsu, IAB, IAB Europe, VIA Nederland/Deloitte, Eurostat, Statcounter and the annual reports of Alphabet and Meta. Whether you want to benchmark your ad budget, compare channels, or brief a specialist Google Ads agency on your next campaign: this is the data you need.

Section 1

Global online ad market

$1.3T

global ad revenue expected in 2026 (excl. US political), +8.9%

WPP Media, 2026

$1.14T

global ad revenue in 2025, +8.8%

WPP Media, 2025

68.7%

digital share of all ad investment in 2026 (forecast)

dentsu, 2025

57.6%

of the ad market held by Alphabet, Meta and Amazon (outside China)

WPP Media, 2026

How big is the global ad market?

  • WPP Media raised its 2026 forecast in June 2026: global advertising revenue (excluding US political advertising) is now expected to grow 8.9% to $1.3 trillion, up from a 7.1% forecast in December 2025 (WPP Media, 2026)
  • In 2025 global advertising revenue reached $1.14 trillion, 8.8% more than in 2024 (WPP Media, 2025)
  • dentsu measures more conservatively: global ad spend passes $1 trillion for the first time in 2026, growing 5.1%, while digital spend grows 6.7% and makes up 68.7% of the total (dentsu, 2025)
  • Content-driven advertising (publishers, TV, streaming and other media owners) is forecast at $720.2 billion in 2026, up 8.2% (WPP Media, 2026)

The largest markets

  • US internet advertising revenue rose 13.9% to $294.6 billion in 2025 (IAB/PwC, 2026)
  • Digital advertising in Europe grew 10.5% to €131.1 billion in 2025, and all 30 markets in the benchmark grew (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • For 2026 dentsu expects ad spend to grow 5.4% in Asia-Pacific, 5.2% in the Americas and 4.2% in Europe (dentsu, 2025)
  • The audience is almost global: 6.04 billion people used the internet in October 2025 and there are 5.66 billion social media user identities (DataReportal, 2026)
Section 2

Market share by channel

35.2%

of European digital ad spend goes to search (2025)

IAB Europe, 2026

27.1%

goes to social in Europe, the fastest-growing format (+19.2%)

IAB Europe, 2026

$294.7B

Google advertising revenue in 2025

Alphabet 10-K, 2026

$196.2B

Meta advertising revenue in 2025 (+22%)

Meta, 2026

Channel split in Europe

  • In 2025, 35.2% of European digital ad spend went to search, 27.1% to social, 21.9% to display (including video and audio), 10.2% to retail media and 5.6% to classifieds and directories (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • Search grew 8.8% to €56.2 billion; retail search (ads on e-commerce sites) grew 19.1% to €10.0 billion and is now 17.8% of all search (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • Social grew 19.2% to €35.5 billion, led by social video (+25.7%), which now makes up 52% of social (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • Total video advertising grew 19.6% to €34.0 billion and for the first time accounts for more than half of all display investment in Europe (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • Digital audio in Europe reached €1.23 billion (+13.9%), of which podcasts €539 million (+16.7%) (ppc.land on IAB Europe, 2026)

Channels in the US and the largest platforms

  • US search advertising grew 11.0% to about $114.2 billion in 2025, roughly 38.8% of internet ad revenue (BusinessStats on IAB/PwC, 2026)
  • Social media platforms earned about $117.7 billion in US ad revenue in 2025, up 32.6% (BusinessStats on IAB/PwC, 2026)
  • Google's $294.7 billion in 2025 ad revenue breaks down into $224.5 billion from Search & other, $40.4 billion from YouTube ads and $29.8 billion from the Google Network (Alphabet 10-K, 2026)
  • Meta's ad impressions grew 12% in 2025 and the average price per ad rose 9% (Meta, 2026)
  • Google handles 91.05% of all searches worldwide and Bing 4.8% (October 2026) (Statcounter, 2026)
  • dentsu expects retail media (+14.1%), online video (+11.5%) and social (+11.4%) to grow fastest in 2026, against 2.4% for TV (dentsu, 2025)
Section 3

Programmatic advertising

$162.4B

US programmatic ad revenue in 2025 (+20.5%)

IAB/PwC, 2026

€15.8B

programmatic display and video in Europe in 2025 (+10.9%)

IAB Europe, 2026

67.9%

global display viewability (video: 79.7%)

IAS, 2026

45.1%

of tracked programmatic spend reached quality impressions (Q2 2026)

ANA, 2026

Programmatic in numbers

  • In Europe, programmatic display and video (excluding social) grew 10.9% in 2025, while non-programmatic display grew only 1.5% (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • In Q2 2025, private marketplace CPMs averaged $7.15 against $4.41 on the open marketplace among advertisers in the ANA benchmark (ANA, 2025)
  • Connected TV accounted for about 41.6% of programmatic spend tracked in the ANA benchmark in Q2 2026 (ANA via Fiducia, 2026)
  • Mobile web display made up 45.1% of all impressions but 71.9% of all made-for-advertising (MFA) impressions (IAS, 2026)

More benchmarks are on our programmatic advertising statistics page. Brands often combine programmatic with paid social via a Facebook Ads agency for full-funnel reach.

Section 4

Search vs social advertising

$5.42

median CPC for search ads in the US (CTR 6.64%)

WordStream/LocaliQ, 2026

$1.80

median CPC for Facebook lead campaigns in the US (CTR 2.70%)

WordStream, 2026

+19.2%

social growth in Europe in 2025, against +8.8% for search

IAB Europe, 2026

Search ads versus social ads (US benchmarks)

  • Search ads: median CPC $5.42, CTR 6.64%, conversion rate 8.18% and cost per lead $66.69 (13,474 US campaigns, Google and Microsoft Ads) (WordStream/LocaliQ via PPC Land, 2026)
  • Facebook lead campaigns: CTR 2.70%, CPC $1.80, conversion rate 8.54% and cost per lead $27.39 (WordStream, 2026)
  • Facebook traffic campaigns: median CTR 1.93% and CPC $0.60, down from $0.70 a year earlier (WordStream, 2026)

Where the budget is moving

  • In the US, social media platforms (about $117.7 billion, +32.6%) earned more ad revenue in 2025 than search (about $114.2 billion, +11.0%) (BusinessStats on IAB/PwC, 2026)
  • In Europe social grew 19.2% in 2025 and search 8.8%; search is still the largest format at 35.2% of spend (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • In the Netherlands, Meta held 65.5% and TikTok 17.2% of social media spend in the first half of 2026 (DDMA benchmark of 674,000 campaigns) (DDMA, 2026)
Section 5

Mobile advertising

59.9%

of worldwide web traffic comes from mobile (October 2026)

Statcounter, 2026

96.35%

Google's share of mobile search worldwide

Statcounter, 2026

3.58B

people use a Meta app every day (December 2025)

Meta, 2026

Mobile reach and quality

  • Worldwide 59.9% of web traffic came from mobile in October 2026, 38.51% from desktop and 1.59% from tablet (Statcounter, 2026)
  • In the Netherlands mobile accounted for 65.06% of web traffic, desktop 33.38% and tablet 1.56% (October 2026) (Statcounter, 2026)
  • 98.3% of Dutch people aged 16 to 74 used the internet on a smartphone in 2025, against 89.9% in the EU (Eurostat, 2025)
  • Quality varies: mobile web display carries four times the MFA rate of desktop (IAS, 2026)
  • Social video is projected at $31.9 billion in US ad spend in 2026, ahead of CTV at $29.3 billion (IAB, 2026)
Section 6

Privacy & cookieless

76.83%

of EU companies that buy online ads use contextual targeting

Eurostat, 2025

66%

of digital advertising in the Netherlands is set up cookieless (2025)

Mediaonderzoek.nl, 2026

16.59%

Safari share of the worldwide browser market (October 2026)

Statcounter, 2026

68%

of European ad professionals name cross-platform data access as top addressability challenge

IAB Europe, 2025

Cookies, Chrome and targeting

  • On 22 April 2025 Google announced that Chrome keeps third-party cookies and will not roll out a separate cookie prompt (Google, 2025)
  • On 17 October 2025 Google announced it is retiring Privacy Sandbox technologies including Topics, Protected Audience and the Attribution Reporting API (Google, 2025)
  • Of EU companies that paid for internet ads in 2024, 76.83% used contextual targeting, 44.29% geo-targeting and 41.57% behavioural targeting based on past browsing (Eurostat, 2025)
  • Privacy regulations (58%) and signal loss from cookie deprecation (48%) follow data access as the main addressability challenges in Europe (IAB Europe, 2025)
  • More than 50% of surveyed European organisations use or test data clean rooms and Unified ID solutions; 46% use contextual data (IAB Europe, 2025)
  • Safari holds 16.59% and Firefox 2.57% of the worldwide browser market, Chrome 68.79% (October 2026) (Statcounter, 2026)
Section 7

Retail media & new channels

$178.2B

global commerce (retail media) ad revenue in 2025, more than TV

WPP Media, 2025

€13.3B

retail media in Europe in 2025 (+16.7%)

IAB Europe, 2026

$63.4B

US commerce media in 2025 (+18.0%)

IAB/PwC, 2026

~$68.6B

Amazon advertising revenue in 2025

ppc.land, 2026

Retail media

  • Commerce advertising reached $178.2 billion worldwide in 2025 and surpassed total TV ad revenue for the first time (WPP Media, 2025)
  • Retail media in Europe grew 16.7% to €13.3 billion and passed 10% of total digital ad spend for the first time (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • Amazon's advertising business earned about $68.6 billion in 2025, including $21.3 billion in the fourth quarter (ppc.land, 2026)

Video, CTV, out-of-home and creators

  • US digital video ad revenue (including CTV and social video) grew 25.4% to $78 billion in 2025 (IAB/PwC, 2026)
  • US CTV ad spend is projected to grow 11% to $29.3 billion in 2026 (IAB, 2026)
  • Global digital out-of-home spend rose to $25.5 billion in 2025, 47% of all out-of-home revenue (WOO, 2026)
  • Programmatic DOOH was $1.339 billion worldwide in 2025, about 7% of DOOH spend (WOO, 2025)
  • US podcast ad revenue was $2.9 billion in 2025 (+17.6%), about 1% of digital ad revenue (IAB/PwC, 2026)
  • US advertisers spent $37 billion on creators in 2025, with $44 billion expected in 2026 (IAB/PwC, 2026)
Section 8

Regional comparison

€46.9B

UK digital ad spend in 2025, the largest market in Europe

IAB Europe, 2026

62%

of European digital ad spend comes from the UK, Germany and France

IAB Europe, 2026

€4.76B

Dutch digital ad spend in 2025 (+9.9%), Europe's 7th market

IAB Europe, 2026

41.5%

of Dutch companies (10+ staff) pay for internet ads, EU 32.59%

Eurostat, 2026

Europe

  • The UK (€46.9 billion), Germany (€21.6 billion) and France (€12.7 billion) together account for 62% of the European digital ad market (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • For comparison, IAB Europe puts the US market at about €260.5 billion in 2025 (+13.9%) (ppc.land on IAB Europe, 2026)
  • 32.59% of EU companies with 10 or more employees paid for internet advertising in 2024; Germany 38.5%, France 27.75% (Eurostat, 2026)

The Netherlands

  • IAB Europe puts Dutch digital ad spend at €4,761 million in 2025, up 9.9%, and Dutch search at €2,251 million (+9.8%) (IAB Europe, 2026)
  • The Dutch Digital Ad Spend Study (VIA Nederland/Deloitte) measured just over €4.4 billion in 2025; digital is 75% of the Dutch media mix (VIA Nederland/Deloitte, 2026)
  • In a revised version of that study display was corrected upward by €144 million, putting 2025 growth at 10% and the share of global platforms at 81% (Mediaonderzoek.nl, 2026)
  • 41.5% of Dutch companies with 10 or more employees paid for internet ads in 2024, well above the EU average of 32.59% (Eurostat, 2026)
  • Google handles 89.6% and Bing 4.64% of searches in the Netherlands (October 2026) (Statcounter, 2026)
Summary

Key takeaways

1. A $1.3 trillion market

Global ad revenue is expected to grow 8.9% to $1.3 trillion in 2026 (WPP Media, 2026), and 68.7% of investment goes to digital (dentsu, 2025).

2. Search is the largest format, social grows fastest

In Europe search takes 35.2% of digital spend, but social grew 19.2% in 2025 against 8.8% for search (IAB Europe, 2026).

3. Video passes half of display

European video ad spend grew 19.6% to €34.0 billion and is now more than half of display (IAB Europe, 2026).

4. Three platforms dominate

Alphabet, Meta and Amazon hold 57.6% of the ad market outside China (WPP Media, 2026).

5. Retail media is bigger than TV

Commerce advertising reached $178.2 billion in 2025, more than total TV ad revenue (WPP Media, 2025).

6. The Netherlands is a mature market

Dutch digital ad spend was €4.76 billion in 2025, Europe's 7th market (IAB Europe, 2026), and 41.5% of Dutch companies pay for online ads (Eurostat, 2026).

Methodology & sources

Every figure on this page links to the source we opened. We checked all statistics again on 9 November 2026 and removed figures we could not trace to a primary source. Market forecasts from different firms use different definitions, so we always name the source next to the number. Main sources:

Market forecasts: WPP Media This Year Next Year (June 2026), WPP Media (December 2025) and dentsu Ad Spend Forecasts. US: IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Europe: IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark 2025. Netherlands: VIA Nederland/Deloitte Digital Ad Spend Study 2025, DDMA Social Advertising Benchmark and Eurostat. Platforms: annual reports of Alphabet and Meta, Statcounter. Benchmarks: WordStream, IAS, ANA, WOO and Semrush.

Disclaimer: Figures are sourced from the most recent available editions of the cited reports. Some statistics are forecasts or survey results. Market figures may differ depending on definitions and measurement methodology. For specific advice on your situation, get in touch with our team.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How big is the global online advertising market in 2026?

WPP Media expects global advertising revenue to grow 8.9% to $1.3 trillion in 2026 (excluding US political advertising), after $1.14 trillion in 2025. According to dentsu, 68.7% of all ad investment goes to digital. The US internet ad market alone was $294.6 billion in 2025 (IAB/PwC) and Europe's digital market €131.1 billion (IAB Europe).

Which advertising channel has the largest market share?

In Europe search is the largest format with 35.2% of digital ad spend in 2025, followed by social (27.1%), display including video and audio (21.9%), retail media (10.2%) and classifieds (5.6%), according to IAB Europe. In the US, social media platforms (about $117.7 billion) narrowly overtook search (about $114.2 billion) in 2025. Google handles 91.05% of searches worldwide (Statcounter, October 2026).

What percentage of online ad spend goes to mobile?

We found no reliable, openly published figure for the mobile share of global ad spend. What is measured: 59.9% of worldwide web traffic came from mobile in October 2026 (Statcounter), Google holds 96.35% of mobile search, and 3.58 billion people use a Meta app every day. In the Netherlands 65.06% of web traffic is mobile.

What is programmatic advertising and how large is the market?

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying of ad space through software and auctions. In the US programmatic ad revenue grew 20.5% to $162.4 billion in 2025 (IAB/PwC). In Europe programmatic display and video (excluding social) grew 10.9% to €15.8 billion (IAB Europe). In the ANA benchmark, private marketplace CPMs averaged $7.15 against $4.41 on the open market in Q2 2025.

How is cookieless advertising affecting the market?

Google decided in 2025 to keep third-party cookies in Chrome and to retire most Privacy Sandbox technologies, while Safari (16.59% of the worldwide browser market) and Firefox (2.57%) restrict them by default. Advertisers rely more on context: 76.83% of EU companies that buy online ads use contextual targeting (Eurostat). In the Netherlands 66% of digital advertising was set up cookieless in 2025.

Which countries spend the most on online advertising per capita?

We could not find a verified, openly published per-capita ranking, so we no longer show one. By total spend, the US is the largest market ($294.6 billion in 2025). In Europe the UK leads with €46.9 billion, followed by Germany (€21.6 billion) and France (€12.7 billion); the Netherlands is 7th with €4.76 billion (IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark 2025).

Online advertising expertise by Searchlab

At Searchlab, we closely monitor the global online advertising market. With over 50 proprietary AI tools and 10 years of experience in search, social, and programmatic advertising, we help businesses optimize their advertising spend for measurable results. Our data-driven approach combines the latest market insights with AI optimization.

Want to know how your online advertising performance compares to these market benchmarks? Request a free growth analysis to discuss your advertising strategy.

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Ruud ten Have

Compiled by

Ruud ten Have

Ruud is a digital marketer with 10+ years of experience in online advertising and AI implementation. At Searchlab, he combines strategic thinking with hands-on AI tooling to deliver measurable results for businesses.

About Searchlab

We don’t just collect this data, we apply it daily as an AI-first marketing agency in Amsterdam. Dutch businesses can explore our SEA bureau services.

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