Digital advertising in Europe: up 10.5% in 2025, video overtakes everything else

On 7 July 2026, IAB Europe published its annual AdEx Benchmark study: Europe's digital advertising market grew 10.5% in 2025, reaching €131 billion. For the first time in twenty editions, video now accounts for more than half of display investment, driven by social video and retail media. For a Belgian SME, this shift is worth a look at how a limited ad budget gets split.

1. Growth driven by video and retail media

Video grew 19.6%, to €34 billion, and now accounts for more than half of display investment in Europe, a first. Social video, the fastest-growing format in the study, climbed 25.7%. Social advertising overall grew 19.2%, to €35.5 billion. Retail media, ad space on retailer sites and marketplaces, grew 16.7%, to €13.3 billion, passing 10% of total digital ad spend for the first time. Classic display grew 12.5%, paid search 8.8%, classifieds 6.5%. Western European markets comparable to Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, grew around 10%.

2. What this means for your budget

Short video, Reels, Stories, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, is no longer a premium format reserved for big brands: it's the format capturing growth. If your ad budget still sits mostly in static visuals, you're positioned in a segment growing roughly half as fast as video. Retail media is also worth testing if you sell online, on Amazon, Google Shopping or a sector marketplace: it's the format gaining the most ground after video. Paid search (Google Ads) stays solid and keeps growing; it shouldn't be abandoned, but rebalanced against these two growth engines.

3. Reading the numbers with some care

This study aggregates 30 European markets: it doesn't break out a specific Belgian figure in this edition. Western European markets comparable to Belgium grew around 10%, a useful order of magnitude, not a precise national number. IAB Europe's chief economist, Daniel Knapp, sums up the underlying shift: digital advertising is becoming sales infrastructure, shelf space and shopfront at once. In other words, measuring real return matters more than ever in deciding where the next euro goes.

The AI lens, people first

AI can help produce more short video variants, cut existing content into vertical formats, and flag which retail media placements perform for a given catalogue. It runs that production and sorting work. But choosing which products to feature in video, which retail media platform makes sense for your business, and how to read an aggregated European figure at the scale of a Belgian SME, stays a human call. Our stance: people first, AI in support.