Europe’s digital promoting market grew 10.5 p.c in 2025 to succeed in 131.1 billion euros, in accordance with IAB Europe’s AdEx Benchmark 2025 Report, launched on July 7, 2026, at a devoted occasion in London. The 20th version of the annual research discovered that each one of many 30 nationwide markets it tracks recorded progress over the prior 12 months, even because the tempo of enlargement slowed from the 16 p.c surge recorded in 2024.
The report, compiled by IAB Europe in collaboration with nationwide promoting associations throughout the continent, positions video-led codecs and retail media as the 2 defining progress tales of the 12 months. Video promoting crossed a threshold it had by no means reached earlier than: for the primary time, it now accounts for greater than half of all show funding in Europe. Retail media crossed a comparable milestone, passing 10 p.c of whole digital advert spend for the primary time since IAB Europe started monitoring the class.
A market nonetheless rising, however extra slowly than the 12 months earlier than
The headline quantity sits inside an extended development line. Based on the report, Europe’s digital promoting market rose from 102.2 billion euros in 2023 to 118.6 billion euros in 2024, a bounce of 16.0 p.c, earlier than reaching 131.1 billion euros in 2025. That 10.5 p.c enhance added 12.5 billion euros to the market in a single 12 months. It additionally marks a deceleration: progress in 2025 got here in beneath the prior 12 months’s tempo, although it remained near the market’s pre-pandemic long-run common, which the report calculates at roughly 10 to 13 p.c throughout most years between 2012 and 2019.
Excluding Turkey, whose foreign money instability skews mixture figures, progress throughout the remainder of Europe stood at 9.7 p.c. As soon as IAB Europe adjusted the headline determine for inflation in Turkey and Ukraine utilizing a brand new methodology launched this 12 months, progress fell additional nonetheless, to 9.4 p.c. That inflation-adjusted determine strips out what the report calls an artefact: roughly 1.1 proportion factors of the ten.5 p.c headline progress fee displays worth will increase in high-inflation markets somewhat than real enlargement in promoting exercise.
Dr. Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist at IAB Europe, framed the 12 months’s efficiency towards a tough macroeconomic backdrop. The market added 12.5 billion euros in 2025, rising 10.5 p.c at fixed foreign money to succeed in 131.1 billion euros, a consequence he mentioned arrived regardless of sluggish GDP progress, commerce coverage uncertainty and cautious shoppers throughout the continent. That mixture, he argued, factors to one thing structural: digital promoting, in his phrases, is “decoupling from the macro cycle.” He characterised the shift in blunt industrial phrases, describing digital promoting as functioning as “gross sales infrastructure, shelf house and shopfront directly,” including that companies now fund it the best way they fund distribution somewhat than the best way they traditionally funded media.
Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe, struck a equally measured tone in her opening remarks accompanying the report. Though progress in 2025 was extra measured than the rebound recorded the 12 months earlier than, she wrote that the course of journey stays clear, with advertiser funding persevering with to maneuver towards channels and codecs that replicate altering client behaviour, rising demand for measurable outcomes, and the continuing convergence of media, commerce and know-how. Each one of many 30 markets coated within the report grew throughout the 12 months, an final result she described as remarkably broad-based.
Why the report issues
The AdEx Benchmark research is IAB Europe’s flagship measurement product and the trade’s most cited supply for mixture European digital advert spend. Since 2006, the organisation has printed the report utilizing information submitted by nationwide IAB associations, supplemented by public filings and third-party information the place nationwide figures are unavailable. This 12 months’s version attracts on submissions from 30 markets, 5 of which (Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal and Romania) haven’t any nationwide affiliation submission and are as a substitute absolutely modelled by IAB Europe utilizing regional progress charges, firm filings and historic trajectories.
For advertising professionals, the report capabilities as a calibration software: finances planners benchmark nationwide efficiency towards continental tendencies, businesses use it to assist channel-shift suggestions, and platform distributors contextualise their very own progress claims towards an impartial, harmonised baseline. PPC Land’s earlier protection of the 2024 edition of the AdEx Benchmark Report documented the market’s first crossing of the 100 billion euro threshold, a milestone the present 131.1 billion euro determine builds upon one 12 months later.
Video crosses the midway mark in show for the primary time
Video promoting grew 19.6 p.c in 2025 to succeed in 34.0 billion euros, and the report states that that is the primary 12 months by which video has accounted for greater than half of all show funding throughout Europe. That threshold has been constructing for a while. Based on the report’s personal long-run chart of digital outperformance towards conventional media, the hole between digital and non-digital media progress charges widened to 17.0 proportion factors in 2025, up from 13.7 proportion factors in 2024, a shift the report attributes partly to continued advertiser migration towards digital video in each social and non-social environments.
Inside video particularly, progress was not evenly distributed by sub-format. Subscription video-on-demand promoting, the class overlaying platforms resembling Netflix, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video, grew 59.6 p.c in 2025. That determine appears to be like modest solely compared with the 222.4 p.c progress SVOD promoting posted in 2024, when the class was increasing from a much smaller base. Broadcast video-on-demand grew 14.5 p.c, down from 29.5 p.c the 12 months earlier than, whereas promoting video-on-demand, the free ad-supported class that features platforms like YouTube, grew 9.6 p.c, decelerating from 16.9 p.c in 2024. Complete video promoting progress throughout all sub-formats got here in at 13 p.c for the 12 months, towards 23 p.c in 2024.
Ten European markets now see video account for greater than half of their whole show promoting, excluding social. Slovenia leads that group at 89.4 p.c, adopted by Turkey at 72.7 p.c and Ukraine at 68.3 p.c. Video’s general share of Europe’s non-social show market reached 48.2 p.c in 2025, simply in need of the continental crossover level, although the mixed view of show and social video, which the report treats individually in a single chart, reveals video and customary codecs splitting the market evenly at 50 p.c every.
Programmatic shopping for continued to soak up a rising share of that video progress. Programmatic show and video spending, excluding social, rose 10.9 p.c to fifteen.771 billion euros in 2025, towards non-programmatic progress of simply 1.5 p.c. Inside programmatic particularly, video spending grew 19.8 p.c to 9.832 billion euros, whereas programmatic show spending exterior video fell 1.2 p.c to five.939 billion euros, indicating that finances continues emigrate from static show codecs towards video throughout the programmatic channel itself.
Social promoting, measured individually from show within the report’s taxonomy, grew 19.2 p.c to succeed in 35.5 billion euros. Social video was the fastest-growing particular person format tracked wherever on this 12 months’s report, increasing 25.7 p.c to 18.602 billion euros and now representing 52 p.c of whole social advert income. Commonplace, non-video social codecs grew a extra modest 12.9 p.c to 16.908 billion euros. IAB Europe’s personal mixed view of show video and social video collectively reveals the 2 classes rising 19.6 p.c as a unit to 33.960 billion euros, a determine adjusted to 17.8 p.c as soon as inflation in Turkey and Ukraine is factored in.
Retail media, the class overlaying promoting offered on retailer and e-commerce platforms, grew 16.7 p.c in 2025 to succeed in 13.314 billion euros. Based on the report, this marks the primary time retail media has crossed 10 p.c of whole European digital advert spend. The class splits into retail search, which reached 10.002 billion euros after rising 19.1 p.c, and retail show, which grew a slower 9.8 p.c to three.312 billion euros. Notably, this retail media measurement excludes in-store retail media, off-site retail media, and non-retail promoting income resembling SVOD advert income from retailers, that means the true scale of retail commerce promoting in Europe probably runs larger than the AdEx determine alone would recommend.
The retail search element grew shut to a few instances sooner than customary, non-retail search promoting. Complete search promoting income, combining each classes, rose 8.8 p.c to 56.155 billion euros in 2025, with customary search rising 6.8 p.c to 46.153 billion euros whereas retail search’s 19.1 p.c progress pulled its share of whole search spend as much as 17.8 p.c, from 16.3 p.c the 12 months earlier than.
The class’s enlargement on this 12 months’s AdEx report follows a sample already seen in IAB Europe’s October 2025 retail media landscape update, which discovered retail media reaching 13.7 billion euros in 2024 with 21.1 p.c progress underneath a broader measurement scope than the one used within the AdEx report itself. The 2 figures should not immediately comparable, since IAB Europe publishes retail media information by way of a couple of methodology relying on the research, however each level towards a class that has moved previous its experimental section right into a core line merchandise inside digital budgets.
Classifieds, show and paid search path the pack
Show promoting, outlined within the report to incorporate banners, native codecs, built-in content material, e-newsletter advertisements and affiliate marketing online however to exclude video, audio and social, grew 12.5 p.c general for the 12 months. Inside that determine, nonetheless, non-video show spending truly fell 0.8 p.c to fifteen.461 billion euros, a contraction that stands out towards practically each different format tracked within the report. Digital audio, the smallest main format class, grew 13.9 p.c to 1.230 billion euros, cut up between podcast promoting, which grew 16.7 p.c to 539 million euros, and different audio codecs together with streaming and web radio, which grew 11.8 p.c to 691 million euros.
Classifieds and directories, the class overlaying job postings, actual property listings and related structured promoting, grew 6.5 p.c to succeed in a complete the report doesn’t state as a standalone euro determine within the sections reviewed, although its progress fee locations it because the slowest-expanding of the 5 headline codecs tracked. The report describes this class as being in what it calls structural transformation, mirrored in an unusually big selection of nationwide progress charges: Turkey posted 67.1 p.c progress within the class whereas 5 markets, together with Finland at unfavorable 10.0 p.c and Denmark at unfavorable 5.9 p.c, noticed outright contraction.
Paid search, excluding the retail search element mentioned above, grew 6.8 p.c for normal search particularly, whereas the mixed search class together with retail search grew 8.8 p.c general. Fourteen markets recorded double-digit search progress, led by Croatia at 64.2 p.c and Turkey at 40.0 p.c, each figures reflecting foreign money and inflation dynamics particular to these markets somewhat than comparable underlying demand progress.
Geography: broad progress, concentrated worth
All 30 markets coated by the report posted progress in 2025, a consequence IAB Europe’s management referred to as remarkably broad-based. Sixteen of these thirty markets grew at double-digit charges in nominal phrases; as soon as the report’s new inflation-adjustment methodology is utilized to Turkey and Ukraine, that variety of double-digit performers narrows to 14, since a portion of Turkey’s and Ukraine’s headline progress displays foreign money depreciation somewhat than increasing advertiser demand.
Turkey led the continent in nominal progress at 37.0 p.c, although its inflation-adjusted progress fee falls to simply 1.6 p.c as soon as the report’s IAS 29 tier technique, tailored from the worldwide accounting customary used to categorise hyperinflationary economies, is utilized. Ukraine’s nominal progress of twenty-two.0 p.c equally compresses to eight.2 p.c on an inflation-adjusted foundation. Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic rounded out the ten fastest-growing markets in nominal phrases, and the report notes that every one ten of the fastest-growing markets sit inside Central, Japanese or South-Japanese Europe. In mixture, that regional bloc grew by greater than 20 p.c, roughly twice the tempo of Europe’s extra mature Western markets.
Regardless of that progress differential, absolute market worth stays closely concentrated. The UK, Germany and France collectively account for 62 p.c of whole European digital advert spend, with the UK alone representing 46.933 billion euros, greater than double Germany’s 21.583 billion euros and nicely forward of France’s 12.701 billion euros. Extending the focus measure additional, the highest 5 markets account for 70 p.c of whole spend, the highest ten for 88 p.c, and the highest fifteen for 95 p.c, leaving the remaining fifteen markets within the research to divide simply 5 p.c of whole European digital promoting funding amongst themselves.
The report additionally situates Europe towards the USA for the primary time on this degree of comparative element. The US digital promoting market reached 260.5 billion euros in 2025, in accordance with figures IAB Europe sourced from IAB US and transformed at a relentless alternate fee of 1.131 US {dollars} per euro, rising 13.9 p.c 12 months over 12 months. That locations the European market at barely over half the scale of its American counterpart, and confirms that the US grew sooner in proportion phrases in 2025 than Europe did, widening somewhat than narrowing absolutely the hole between the 2 markets.
A brand new lens on inflation, and a warning about protection gaps
For the primary time within the report’s twenty-year historical past, IAB Europe launched an inflation-adjusted view of market progress, developed utilizing client worth index information from the World Financial institution cross-checked towards the Worldwide Financial Fund’s World Financial Outlook database. The methodology classifies markets into two tiers: Tier 1, hyperinflationary markets with cumulative three-year inflation of one hundred pc or extra, which applies solely to Turkey on this 12 months’s information at 229.1 p.c cumulative inflation; and Tier 2, high-inflation markets with both annual inflation above 10 p.c or cumulative three-year inflation above 30 p.c, a threshold Ukraine meets at 35.4 p.c cumulative inflation. All different markets are handled as customary and obtain no inflation adjustment, for the reason that report’s personal documentation notes that client worth indices solely operate as legitimate deflators for promoting figures the place inflation is massive relative to the divergence between client costs and media costs particularly.
The report can also be notably clear concerning the limits of its personal measurement protection, publishing what it describes as a search lengthy tail disclosure. In a number of markets, IAB Europe’s information notes, nationwide measurement captures spend by affiliation members and agency-transacted budgets however not the self-serve lengthy tail of advertisers, spend that tends to pay attention in search and, in some markets, social. The place a market’s search share of whole digital advert spend falls beneath half the European common share of 42.8 p.c with out a structural clarification, the report flags that marketplace for a protection evaluate somewhat than adjusting the determine upward. Belgium, Romania, Turkey, Slovakia, Serbia and Croatia all carry this flag within the present version. Slovakia’s flag comes with a particular documented trigger: its nationwide information supply covers solely the nation’s largest advertisers, with long-tail spending from small and medium companies excluded on the specific request of IAB Slovakia, a choice the report states understates each search and social spending for that market because of this.
The AI query, deferred to subsequent 12 months
Each Knapp and Feehan touched on synthetic intelligence of their contributions to the report, although neither handled it as a defining theme of this 12 months’s version. Knapp described AI’s impact on promoting in 2025 as targeting the availability facet of the market, producing cheaper artistic manufacturing, higher marketing campaign optimisation, and elevated automation, with productiveness positive factors that disproportionately profit smaller advertisers, in his evaluation. He was cautious to separate that supply-side impact from what he referred to as AI’s second-order results on search behaviour, agentic shopping for, and channel finances allocation, modifications he mentioned are solely starting to floor and can outline subsequent 12 months’s version of the report.
Feehan’s opening remarks struck the same word of measured anticipation somewhat than declaration. She wrote that as AI begins to affect how promoting is deliberate, activated, measured and optimised, the trade should be certain that innovation is matched by belief, transparency and accountability, including that continued progress will rely upon the ecosystem’s capacity to work collectively to construct a digital promoting market that’s efficient, accountable and sustainable.
What comes subsequent
IAB Europe has not printed a date for the following version of the AdEx Benchmark Report, although the twenty-year publishing cadence of the research suggests a launch timed to mid-2027 overlaying full-year 2026 information. Within the interim, IAB Europe’s nationwide member associations proceed to publish country-specific element all year long, a number of of which PPC Land has beforehand coated in depth, together with Poland’s and Ukraine’s respective nationwide digital promoting experiences printed in June 2026. These nationwide research, produced independently of the pan-European AdEx methodology, generally diverge from the harmonised European figures, a niche the AdEx report itself acknowledges arises from differing scope, class boundaries and net-versus-gross reporting conventions throughout the 30 nationwide markets it aggregates.
Timeline
- 2006: IAB Europe begins publishing the AdEx Benchmark Report collection.
- 2023: Europe’s digital promoting market reaches 102.2 billion euros in fixed 2025 euro phrases.
- 2024: The market grows 16.0 p.c to succeed in 118.6 billion euros in fixed 2025 euro phrases, restated from the 118.9 billion euro determine initially reported for that 12 months.
- July 7, 2026: IAB Europe releases the AdEx Benchmark 2025 Report at a devoted occasion in London, reporting 10.5 p.c progress to 131.1 billion euros for the 2025 calendar 12 months.
Abstract
Who: IAB Europe, the Brussels-based commerce affiliation representing the European digital advertising and promoting ecosystem, working with nationwide IAB associations throughout 30 markets, authored the report. Dr. Daniel Knapp, IAB Europe’s Chief Economist, and Townsend Feehan, the organisation’s CEO, supplied the report’s central commentary.
What: The 20th version of the AdEx Benchmark Report discovered that Europe’s digital promoting market grew 10.5 p.c in 2025 to succeed in 131.1 billion euros, with video promoting crossing 50 p.c of whole show funding and retail media crossing 10 p.c of whole digital advert spend for the primary time within the research’s historical past.
When: The report was launched on July 7, 2026, at a devoted occasion in London, overlaying full calendar-year 2025 information in contrast towards a restated 2024 baseline.
The place: The research covers 30 European nationwide markets, from the UK and Germany to smaller markets together with Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia, with 5 markets absolutely modelled because of the absence of a nationwide affiliation submission.
Why: The report issues to the advertising group as a result of it capabilities because the trade’s most generally cited harmonised benchmark for European digital advert spend, utilized by planners, businesses and platform distributors to calibrate finances selections towards continental tendencies; this version’s introduction of inflation-adjusted progress figures and specific search-coverage disclosures additionally marks a methodological shift towards better transparency about what the underlying nationwide information can and can’t present.
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