Spending on desktop and mobile advertising combined for $88B last year, a 21 percent jump from the $72.5B figure registered in 2016.
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TV ads outlays for broadcast and cable was $70.1B, a three percent dip. Magazines ($20.9B) and newspapers ($17.0B) were both down, while radio ($17.6B) showed a slight uptick.
Search ads ($40.6B) accounted for 47.7 percent of digital revenues, while banner ads ($27.5B) comprised 31.2 percent of the total. Digital video pulled in $11.9B, a 33 percent jump, and accounted for 13.5 percent of digital ad spending. Social media advertising also grew, rising 36 percent to $22.2B.
Mobile is rapidly becoming dominant across the board on the digital side, surpassing desktop in the search, banner, video and audio sectors. Mobile advertising ($49.9B) rose 36 percent, and now represents 57 percent of the digital total.
While desktop revenues still grew, they did so at a slower rate, hitting $38.1B, up 6.1 percent from FY 2016’s $35.9B.
“Consumers are increasingly spending a tremendous amount of time with interactive screens and content,” said IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg. “Mobile capture more than half of the total digital ad spend last year and we can easily expect that share to continue to climb.”
While AI may have made the basics of generating content easier and more efficient, it has also made it more difficult for a brand to stand out from an ever-growing crowd of voices and platforms, according to a report from Public Relations Global Network and Greenough Communications.
Only 15 percent of the CEOs polled in a new survey from Boathouse think that their CMO merits an “A” for job performance, as opposed to the 53 percent who rank their CMO as “average."
A growing sense of fragmentation when it comes to health issues is leading to greater distrust of both the healthcare industry and the media that reports on it, according to the newly released 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer.
The philanthropy sector appears to be losing its position on the moral high ground, according to the Global Risk Advisory Council’s Reputation Risk Index for Q1 2026.
