This is the latest installment of our “UK Ad Spending Benchmarks” series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.​

Programmatic dominates display advertising across the UK, France, and Germany. But growth looks different in each country. Market maturity, video momentum, and transaction preferences are reshaping where budgets flow—and how buyers need to adapt.

AI is already disrupting programmatic. Generative search is reshaping web traffic, while agentic buying and curated deals redraw how ads are bought and sold. Expect more automation and more premium pipes, but tougher transparency tradeoffs.

This FAQ covers the fundamentals of programmatic advertising and the trends shaping the market in 2026.

Nearly two-thirds of digital advertising spending in 2025 will be delivered on mobile devices. Tariffs may dampen spending growth but shouldn’t reduce mobile’s share of the digital advertising pie.

Worldwide programmatic display ad spending will grow 14.6% in 2025. This report explains our programmatic forecasts for six countries to map global spending trends.

Disruption is imminent for programmatic. The market teeters on the brink of several seismic shifts around identity and audience data. And a landmark antitrust ruling could energize an already hot ad tech consolidation streak.

Programmatic accounts for the vast majority of digital display ad spending across the major markets we track in Western Europe. The UK holds a significant lead in terms of overall spend, but France and Germany are growing quicker.

Advertisers won’t have to quit third-party cookies cold turkey, but long-standing market dynamics around access to quality data aren’t going anywhere.

What are advertisers’ and publishers’ biggest challenges as they redesign their programmatic strategies around data protection legislation and other privacy changes?

Programmatic will account for more than 9 in 10 display ad dollars this year. How it fares as the last legacy identifiers die out will make or break the future of digital advertising.

The UK is a mature programmatic market, but innovation and evolution continue apace, particularly in the connected TV and out-of-home environments. The next step for programmatic practitioners is to invest in multichannel campaign capabilities.

The cookie will finally crumble in 2024, forcing advertising stakeholders to embrace privacy-preserving targeting and measurement alternatives.

Programmatic digital display is no exception to the ad spending downturn that has sent ripples through our forecast. As marketers scrutinize their investments, social networks are losing share of the programmatic pie while CTV and retail media drive growth.

Disintermediation is getting real, upfront advertisers want their programmatic CTV spending accounted for, and Google shares early results from the Privacy Sandbox.

With some legacy identifiers already in the history books and the rest on the chopping block, the digital ad industry is finally getting serious about adopting targeting and measurement practices that don’t rely on cookies and mobile IDs.

Programmatic display ad spending is growing despite challenging economic conditions. Where it’s growing, and how fast, depends on how much data advertisers can access.

Learn how advertisers, publishers, and ad tech players operate in the programmatic marketplace that fuels over 90% of digital display ad spending.

Despite uncertainty stemming from ongoing challenges in identity resolution, programmatic display ad spending is steadily taking on an ever-greater share of total US digital display ad spending.