Global Digital Advertising Market Grows to $348 Billion
Global digital advertising spending grew 19% — to $348 billion. Procter & Gamble displaced Amazon from first place among advertisers, while AI creatives gained 48%.
Global digital advertising spending from August 2025 to July 2026 grew 19% year over year and reached $348 billion. These figures come from the analytics company Sensor Tower. Ad impressions increased by 13% — to 70.7 trillion.
Social Media — the Growth Driver
Social media showed the strongest dynamics among channels: up 28% over the reporting period. Display & Video gained 9%, TV & Streaming — 6%.
Facebook* remains the world's largest advertising channel, accounting for $96.4 billion in spending. Meta* as a whole controls 83% of spending in the social media segment. Meanwhile, in the first half of 2026, Instagram* overtook Facebook* for the first time as the leading channel.
Sensor Tower predicts Reddit will be the fastest-growing platform. TikTok, according to the company's estimate, could add 35% year over year.
Largest Advertisers
Shopping became the biggest advertiser category, comprising businesses from retail and e-commerce.
Procter & Gamble became the world's largest advertiser, displacing Amazon from first place.
Forecast for 2026
According to Sensor Tower's forecast, digital advertising spending will reach $379 billion in 2026, representing 20% growth. Of this amount, $260 billion (68%) will come from social media.
AI as a Standalone Advertising Factor
The AI advertising segment showed significant growth. Spending on creatives with AI terms reached $1.3 billion (+48%), impressions — 167 billion (+46%).
Health & Wellness became the growth leader with a rate of +165%. Financial Services, Business & Industrials, and Media & Entertainment each gained more than 60%.
Analysts also recorded a change in consumer behavior: search queries containing the word AI increasingly lead to app downloads outside of AI services. This means that interest in artificial intelligence technologies is spilling over into other app categories.
*Meta and its social networks Facebook and Instagram are designated as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation.
Source: AdIndex
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