European digital advertising did not simply receive more money during 2025. The place where that money is being spent also changed.
For the first time, video took more than half of all investment in display advertising, retail media exceeded a tenth of the total digital market, and social video grew faster than every other format covered by the research. At the same time, paid search and classifieds continued to advance, but no longer determined the pace of the entire market.
This distribution was shown by the twentieth edition of the AdEx Benchmark 2025 report, which IAB Europe presented in London on 7 July. The analysis covered 30 European markets and found that investment in digital advertising increased by 10.5 percent during the previous year, or by EUR 12.5 billion. The total value of the market thus reached EUR 131.1 billion.
Video was one of the main drivers of growth in the European digital market. Investment in video advertising increased by 19.6 percent to EUR 34 billion, with the format accounting for more than half of the European display market for the first time. Social video stood out in particular, with its value increasing by 25.7 percent.
The growth of video simultaneously lifted the entire social media advertising segment. Social advertising reached EUR 35.5 billion, 19.2 percent more than a year earlier, alongside an increasingly pronounced shift towards short video formats adapted to platforms and different screens.
The second major shift occurred closer to the purchase itself. Retail media grew by 16.7 percent to EUR 13.3 billion and, for the first time, exceeded ten percent of all investment in digital advertising in Europe. This estimate includes on-site search and display formats managed by retailers themselves.
Its growth shows that advertisers are directing an increasing share of their budgets towards environments in which media exposure, customer data and sales results are directly connected. As a result, the boundary between advertising space and the digital store is becoming less visible.
According to IAB Europe Chief Economist Daniel Knapp, the growth of the European digital advertising market to EUR 131.1 billion points to a structural shift in which digital advertising is increasingly evolving from a communications expense into sales infrastructure.
This does not mean that older digital segments have started losing value. Display advertising grew by 12.5 percent, paid search by 8.8 percent and classifieds by 6.5 percent. The difference lies in the pace. Their growth is lagging behind video, social media and retail media, changing the balance of power within a market that continues to grow as a whole.
The results were not the same across all parts of Europe. More mature markets such as France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands grew by approximately ten percent, while the Nordic and Baltic countries ended the year considerably closer to stagnation. This year, the report also introduced an inflation-adjusted view of growth for markets with high price increases. According to this methodology, the real growth of the European market amounted to 9.4 percent.
Croatia is growing faster than the European average
The shift towards video, automated buying and new screens is already visible in Croatia as well. According to the Online Media AdEx 2025/2026 study, published by IAB Croatia in April, the value of the Croatian online advertising market during 2025 was estimated at EUR 190.9 million. This is almost 23 percent more than a year earlier, while growth to EUR 202.8 million is expected in 2026.
Display advertising retained the largest individual share of the domestic market, at approximately EUR 63 million, but social media came close with around EUR 60 million. Investment in search advertising exceeded EUR 47 million, while influencer marketing crossed the EUR 10 million mark.
Within display, 82 percent of investment was directed towards mobile devices, while 66 percent went to programmatic buying. Video accounted for 48 percent of display advertising, with an estimate that it could exceed half of the segment during 2026. Connected TV was recorded separately for the first time and accounted for eight percent of Croatian video advertising.
Vjeko Srednoselec of dentsu Croatia, a member of the working group for the IAB Croatia Online Media AdEx, expects that the next phase of development will be shaped by higher-quality first-party data, artificial intelligence and more precise performance measurement. In such an environment, video, programmatic and CTV are no longer additions to the media plan, but channels from which advertisers simultaneously expect brand building and demonstrable business results.
IAB Croatia has been conducting the domestic market estimate for five consecutive years, in cooperation with a working group of industry experts and Ipsos as an independent partner. Croatian data are included in the European AdEx Benchmark, which has tracked for two decades not only how digital budgets are expanding, but also how their function within marketing and sales is changing.
