The numbers are in, and they tell publishers exactly where the money is moving. Per IAB Europe’s AdEx Benchmark Report, covered this week, European ad spend grew 10.5% year over year to €131 billion, with digital roughly 70% of the total. The engine is video: it now accounts for more than half of display investment, with social video up 25%. Social advertising overall reached €35.5 billion (+19.2%), retail media hit €13.3 billion (+16.7%), and programmatic reached €15.7 billion, growing nearly twice as fast as display overall. The laggard: traditional display contracted 0.8%.
The numbers in this piece
01What the shape of the growth means
A healthy top-line hides a hard truth for open-web publishers: the growth is concentrated in the channels the platforms and retailers own. Social (Meta, TikTok, Snap), retail media (the retailers’ networks), and programmatic video are pulling the market forward, while classic display — the format much of the independent web still leans on — is flat to shrinking. IAB Europe’s chief economist Daniel Knapp framed a theme of “simplification,” with much of the growth skewing to small and mid-sized advertisers using self-serve tools on the big platforms. In other words: more money, flowing into fewer, more automated environments.
02Why this matters
This is the market’s own scoreboard, and it’s a strategy memo if you read it right.
| Video is where the budget is | With video over half of display spend and social video up 25%, publishers without a credible video offering are competing for the slowest-growing slice. Format is a demand decision, not just a production one. |
|---|---|
| Retail media is now a structural pillar, not a side bet | At €13.3B and growing 16.7%, retail media is absorbing budget that used to spread across the web. Publishers that can plug into commerce — first-party audiences, shoppable formats, retail-network partnerships — get access to that pool; those that can't watch it flow elsewhere. |
| Programmatic keeps outpacing | Programmatic growing nearly twice as fast as display means automated, data-driven, machine-legible inventory wins the incremental dollar. Manual, opaque inventory gets left behind. |
| Flat display is the warning | A −0.8% display line is the number to internalize: the default open-web format is no longer where growth lives. Diversify or shrink with it. |
Europe's ad market is growing 10.5% — but almost none of that growth is in the format independent publishers most rely on.
03What publishers should do
04What marketers should do
05The bottom line
Europe’s ad market is growing 10.5% — but almost none of that growth is in the format independent publishers most rely on. Video, programmatic, social, and retail media are the engines; traditional display is stalling. The IAB’s own data is the clearest possible signal of where to steer: toward the channels capturing the money, and away from the ones the market is quietly leaving behind.