Digital advertising grows 22.1% YoY in 1Q’26, with Meta dominating incremental market share.

The digital advertising industry experienced a significant growth acceleration of 22.1% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026. Large-scale advertising players, particularly Meta, have been the biggest beneficiaries of AI-driven advancements, capturing most of the incremental market share. Google Search has maintained a steady share of about 33% in new advertising dollars over the past three years. This trend highlights increasing challenges for smaller advertisers to achieve competitive returns on ad spend outside of dominant platforms like Meta and Google.