We have unprecedented touchpoints, data, tools, and measurement capabilities. The challenge isn't access; it's integration.
2026 marks a watershed moment. Global ad spend will surpass $1.04 trillion for the first time, growing 5.1%,outpacing global economic growth. The UK leads the way in Europe with growth of 5.7%, powered by a mega-event calendar: the FIFA World Cup, Winter Olympics, and the BRIT Awards.
To succeed in this new trillion-dollar reality, advertisers must bridge the gap between the lessons learned in 2025 and the Algorithmic Era of 2026 and beyond.
The fundamental challenge heading into 2026 isn't just media fragmentation- it's the battle for a fixed pool of attention across an increasingly complex landscape. UK consumers spend an average of 4 hours 30 minutes per day watching video content at home, with this figure remaining relatively stable. Yet the platforms competing for those hours have exploded.
Broadcast TV viewing continued its long-term decline in 2024, with individuals spending 4% less time watching broadcast TV on TV sets than in 2023, dropping to 2 hours 24 minutes per day.
The data reveals a dramatic generational shift. Young adults aged 16-24 now spend less than a quarter of their viewing time on broadcaster content (22%), compared to 90% for those aged 75 and over. Meanwhile, YouTube viewing in UK homes grew from 35 minutes per individual per day in early 2023 to 39 minutes by December 2024, with the proportion of YouTube viewing via TV sets increasing from 34% to 41%.
BVoD advertising revenues grew by 15% year-on-year, exceeding £1bn for the first time in 2024, now accounting for 25% of commercial broadcasters' advertising revenues. However, video-sharing platforms and social video now command significant attention. In 2024, social video advertising expenditure reached £6.5bn, significantly exceeding the combined total for linear TV and VoD advertising of £5.3bn.
The shift is particularly pronounced for younger audiences discovering content. YouTube was the most popular first destination by individual service for children aged 4-15 when switching on the TV, with 20% of all TV journeys starting with YouTube, followed closely by Netflix at 18%.
Successful advertisers in 2026 will need to embrace this new reality.
It's no longer about owning prime-time slots or traditional media buys. The UK commercial TV and online video sector recorded modest growth in 2024 at £17.1bn, but this conceals significant divergences, with online video segments including SVoD, BVoD, and connected TV advertising collectively accounting for 42% of overall sector revenue, up from 33% in 2022. The winning strategy combines understanding where audiences actually spend their time, leveraging both traditional broadcaster reach and emerging platform engagement, and measuring effectiveness across this fragmented journey.
AI: Moving from curious to operational
One of the most visible shifts in 2025 was AI moving from a curiosity to being an embedded mainstream tool. This was identified in ITV’s early experiments in AI-generated ads. By launching the GenAI Ads Manager, ITV proved that quality could improve overnight when use cases are clearly defined- like making TV accessible for SMEs.
Brands began combining audience insight tools with human-centered creatives to cut through saturated feeds, using AI to understand people at scale while relying on human oversight, to keep campaigns ethical and aligned with briefs.
This year, AI innovation will shift from these isolated pilots to embedded, outcome-driven workflows. It means moving beyond innovation to becoming infrastructure, as an embedded layer linking operations across industries. Marketers will shift from experimental activations to always-on audience insights and real-time personalisation, to obtain real-world business outcomes.
The Search Evolution: From SEO to GEO
Data remains the lifeblood of our industry, but 2025 was the year marketers finally adapted to a privacy-centric world. With the restriction of third-party cookies, brands were forced to establish first-party data platforms and embrace clean rooms for safe collaboration.
However, as we move into 2026, traditional search is undergoing its most profound transformation in decades as it moves from a destination to an ecosystem. The brands that succeed must ensure to augment their SEO strategy with Generative Search Optimisation (GEO) to be discoverable across conversational AI, visual search, and multimodal environments.
This shift is driven by "Digital Delegation," where an estimated 71.6% of all ad spend will be algorithm-driven and consumers will use AI agents to handle discovery and even purchasing tasks. For advertisers, this means they’re broadening their marketing audience from humans, to machines that filter information for these humans. To win in this environment, brand content must be successfully "parsed" by Large Language Models, ensuring that when an AI agent makes a recommendation, your brand is the one it chooses.
Video and Social Media Continue to Dominate
Social media and digital video are at the epicenter of media evolution, with 87% of UK media experts citing digital video as their top priority for 2026. However, this growth brings significant quality challenges.
According to IAS (Integral Ad Science, 2025) experts identify social media as the media type facing the most serious hurdles, specifically regarding ad content adjacency. For 2026, media quality measurement will be essential to understanding which placements are driving impact, especially as 85% of experts now agree that measuring attention is more important than simple viewability for evaluating campaign success on social platforms.
Winning in the Trillion-Dollar Era
In 2026, the shift to a $1.04 trillion market marks a structural evolution where growth is defined by the transition from manual guesswork to automated intelligence. As we enter this "Algorithmic Era," the gap between those juggling disconnected tools and those who embrace centralised, data-driven precision will be winners.
Buymedia bridges this gap with our adtech platform that combines deep media expertise with cutting-edge AI to transform campaign chaos into streamlined success, allowing you to start the year strong and turn market noise into measurable business impact.
