Advertising in 2026: What the Benchmarks Tell Us About Where Brand Budgets Should Go

Every year, the advertising industry produces a mountain of benchmark reports. Most CMOs skim the headlines and move on. But right now, the data is telling a genuinely interesting story: one about where audiences have gone, where money is following, and where there's still a gap between the two.

We've pulled together the most authoritative figures from Gartner, WARC, eMarketer, and the IAB to give you a clear-eyed view of the 2026 advertising landscape, the benchmarks that matter most, and what they actually mean for your budget.

The headline number: Global ad spend is forecast to grow 8.1% in 2026, reaching $1.27 trillion, according to WARC's updated global forecast. That's a market accelerating, not stalling. But the growth isn't evenly distributed, and that's exactly where the strategic decisions get interesting.

The Budget

Before we get into channels, let's talk about the environment most marketing leads are actually operating in.

Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey, covering 402 CMOs across North America, the UK, and Europe, found that marketing budgets have held flat at 7.7% of overall company revenue. That sounds stable. It isn't, really. Half of the CMOs surveyed are working with budgets of 6% or less of company revenue, and 59% say they don't have enough budget to execute their strategy.

That's the context. A growing market, but tighter internal constraints. Which means allocation decisions matter more than ever.

Where the money is going

Paid media now accounts for 30.6% of total marketing spend, the largest single budget category, and the only segment to grow its share over the past five years, per the same Gartner report. CMOs are allocating nearly two-thirds of their channel budget to digital, with 69% of all digital spend directed to paid placements.

The channels absorbing most of that?

• Search (13.6%)
• Social advertising (12.2%)
• Digital display (10.7%)

Now here's where it gets more interesting...

Social: The Dominant Force (and a Concentration Risk)

Social media is, unambiguously, the biggest story in advertising right now. WARC forecasts social media ad spend rising 14.9% in 2025 to $306.4bn, over a quarter of all global advertising spend. By 2026, social's share of total global spend is projected to reach 23.6%.

Those numbers are extraordinary. But there's a concentration problem baked into them.

"60% of all social ad spend is going to one company."
WARC, 2025 Global Ad Spend Forecast

Meta alone is expected to absorb the majority of that growth. When you add Alphabet and Amazon, just three companies are forecast to attract more than 46% of all global advertising spend (excluding China) by 2026, up from 43.6% in 2024, per WARC's Global Ad Spend Outlook.

For CMOs, this raises a real strategic question: how much dependency on a small number of platforms is acceptable? Social is performing. But it's also fragile: algorithmically, politically, and from a brand safety standpoint.

The practical implication: Social should be the backbone of your digital reach strategy. But it shouldn't be the whole spine.

CTV: The Attention Gap That's Worth Exploiting

Connected TV is the most undervalued channel in most brand budgets right now. And the data makes a compelling case for changing that.

CTV crossed a significant threshold in mid-2025: it now accounts for a larger share of TV viewership than cable and broadcast combined. eMarketer forecasts CTV ad spend to reach $37.95 billion in 2026, growing 14.5% year-on-year. In the UK specifically, CTV ad spend is forecast to climb 16.9% to $3.25 billion this year.

Here's the gap that should catch your attention: CTV accounts for 20.2% of time spent with media, but attracts just 7.7% of total ad spend. That's a significant mismatch between where audiences are and where budgets are going.

The IAB's 2026 Ad Spend and Strategy Outlook projects 13.8% CTV ad spend growth this year, second only to social. And the IAB also reports that marketers reallocated an average of 36% of their linear TV spend to CTV in 2025.

Why CTV earns its place in the brand mix

It's not just about audience migration. CTV's premium, professionally produced environments create measurable brand lift. According to The Trade Desk's 2025 Premium Payoff Report, premium media environments drive a 40% increase in purchase intent and are 30% more effective than lower-quality environments.

Linear TV, by contrast, is projected to decline more than 11% in ad spend in 2026. The audience has moved. The budgets are starting to follow. If yours hasn't yet, that's the opportunity.

Retail Media: Performance's New Frontier

Retail media has moved from "emerging channel" to core budget line faster than almost anyone predicted. And if you're not treating it as such, you're behind.

eMarketer forecasts US retail media ad spend to reach $71.09 billion in 2026, growing 17.8% year-on-year, outpacing both social and search growth rates. Globally, retail media is forecast to exceed $200 billion this year.

The appeal is straightforward: first-party shopper data, closed-loop attribution, and proximity to the point of purchase. According to eMarketer, 40% of advertisers now regard retail media as capable of delivering full-funnel results, only social media ranks higher at 52%.

The caveat? Concentration is a problem here too. Amazon and Walmart are forecast to capture 89% of all incremental retail media spending in 2026, per eMarketer. For brands outside CPG and e-commerce, the question isn't whether to invest in retail media, it's which networks actually match your audience.

The practical implication: Retail media earns its place as a performance layer, not a brand-building one. It works best when combined with upper-funnel investment in channels like CTV and social.

Display Is Not Dead, But It's Definitely Demoted

Standard display advertising had a rough 2025. AdClarity's analysis of US digital ad spend showed display investment falling more than 40% year-on-year, with its share of tracked digital spend dropping from 7.4% to 4.2%.

That's a real structural shift.

The storytelling and upper-funnel work that once sat in display is being redistributed, mostly into premium CTV placements and high-engagement social formats. Display hasn't disappeared, but its role has fundamentally changed. It's now a support channel: cost-efficient retargeting, coverage extension, and frequency management. Not a primary vehicle for brand building.

If your media plan still treats display as a core brand investment, that's worth revisiting.

The Brand vs. Performance Tension Isn't Going Away

One of the most persistent tensions in marketing right now is the push towards performance at the expense of brand. The benchmarks suggest this is a false economy.

Paid media's growing share of marketing budgets reflects a broader appetite for measurable, attributable spend. That's understandable when boards are scrutinising every line item. But performance advertising without brand investment is a diminishing returns game. You're fishing in a pool that gets smaller every year.

The channels growing fastest in 2026 (social, CTV, retail media) are increasingly capable of doing both jobs. Social media now ranks highest for full-funnel capability at 52%, per eMarketer. CTV, with its premium environments and improving measurement, is becoming a credible brand-building channel with performance accountability attached.

What these benchmarks tell us

Taken together, the data points to a few clear shifts:

1. Social is non-negotiable, but platform concentration is a genuine risk worth managing
2. CTV is the most significant underinvestment opportunity relative to audience attention
3. Retail media is now a standard budget line for brands with e-commerce or CPG exposure
4. Display has been relegated, use it for efficiency, not storytelling
5. Linear TV is in structural decline, and budgets should be migrating accordingly

The brands that will outperform in 2026 aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones making smarter decisions about where those budgets go and why.

So, Where Should Your Brand's Budget Go?

The benchmarks don't make the decision for you, but they do narrow the field considerably. Here's how we'd frame the allocation question for most brand-side marketing leads in 2026:

1. Protect your brand investment. The pressure to shift everything to performance is real, but the evidence for brand-building's long-term ROI is equally real. A growing ad market rewards brands with strong creative foundations. Don't let budget constraints hollow out your upper funnel.
2. Take CTV seriously. The attention-to-spend gap is one of the clearest opportunities in the current market. If you're still treating it as experimental, you're behind the curve, and behind your audience.
3. Audit your social dependency. Social is essential. But 60% of global social spend flowing to one company is a concentration risk. Diversifying within social, and building owned channels alongside paid ones, is sound risk management.
4. Treat retail media as infrastructure, not innovation. It's no longer a test-and-learn channel. It's a core line item for brands with relevant distribution. The question is which networks, not whether.

The market is growing. The channels are shifting. And the gap between brands making data-informed decisions and those running on inertia is widening every quarter.

We're an independent creative agency that works with brands at exactly this kind of inflection point, helping them build the creative and strategic foundations to make their media investment work harder. If that sounds like a conversation worth having, chat to our team today.