Market size and ad spend
Programmatic is not a corner of digital advertising; it is how most of digital advertising clears. US digital advertising revenue reached $294.6 billion in 2025, up 13.9% year over year (IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report, published 2026, covering 2025). Within that, 91 percent of US digital display already trades programmatically (IAB/PwC, published 2025, covering 2024). Globally, programmatic ad spend reached $779 billion in 2025 (eMarketer, 2025). These are the figures we size programmatic plans against.
US digital ad revenue: $294.6 billion in 2025
The latest complete IAB/PwC accounting of US digital advertising, up 13.9% year over year, and the base every channel share below is a slice of.
IAB/PwC, Internet Advertising Revenue Report, published 2026 (FY2025 data)91% of US digital display trades programmatically
Automated buying is the default path for display. The open question in 2026 is not whether to buy programmatically but through which paths.
IAB/PwC, published 2025, covering 2024Global programmatic spend: $779 billion in 2025
The worldwide figure, across every format that clears through automated auctions.
eMarketer, Programmatic Ad Spend Forecast, 2025The supply chain: waste, and the cleanup
Two ANA programs frame the supply-chain conversation, and they are not the same study. The ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study (December 2023) is the audit that found roughly $0.36 of every programmatic dollar reaching the publisher; it has not been re-run. The ANA/TAG TrustNet Benchmark (Q2 2025) is the continuous measurement that now tracks the market against that 2023 baseline. The 2025 numbers say the chain is tightening and the waste is still enormous, both at once.
$26.8 billion in annual programmatic waste
The TrustNet benchmark's estimate of what still leaks from the US programmatic supply chain every year, even after the cleanup it documents.
ANA/TAG TrustNet Benchmark, Q2 2025Made-for-advertising spend fell from 15% to a 0.8% median
MFA sites absorbed 15% of open-web programmatic in the December 2023 study. Where spend is actively managed, the Q2 2025 median is 0.8%. The delta is what screening before the bid buys.
ANA/TAG TrustNet Benchmark, Q2 2025; December 2023 baseline from the ANA Transparency StudyPrivate marketplace share climbed from 64.5% to 87.8%
Buyers moved spend out of the undifferentiated open exchange and into vetted paths. This is the structural shift behind every other improvement in the series.
ANA/TAG TrustNet Benchmark, Q2 2025$439 of every $1,000 entering a DSP reaches consumers
Working media is up 7.9 percentage points against the December 2023 baseline of roughly $360 per $1,000. Better, and still a long way from parity: most of a programmatic dollar buys the machinery, not the audience.
ANA/TAG TrustNet Benchmark, Q2 2025How we act on these numbers is documented on supply responsibility: screening runs before the bid, and the path is on the record.
Connected TV and streaming
Television's programmatic story is a share story. Streaming now holds the largest share of US TV time Nielsen has ever measured for it, and the ad dollars are following the audience onto connected TV.
Streaming holds 47.5% of US TV time
Nearly half of all US television viewing now happens on streaming, the highest share in the history of the Gauge.
Nielsen Gauge, December 2025YouTube alone holds 13.4% of US TV viewing
The largest share any single media distributor has held since the Gauge launched, and it is a social platform on the living-room screen.
Nielsen Gauge, July 2025US connected TV ad spend: roughly $33 billion
CTV budgets keep growing at roughly 16 percent a year as linear budgets migrate to streaming environments that transact programmatically.
eMarketer, CTV Ad Spending Forecast, 2025Retail media
Retail media is the fastest-moving line in the mix, and the growth is concentrated off-site, where a retailer's shopper data runs against inventory the retailer does not own. The consequence for planning: a retail media dollar increasingly lands on the open web and on television, not on the retailer's own pages.
Off-site retail media grows 42.1% year over year
Against 15.3% for on-site. Off-site now accounts for roughly 20% of total US retail media spend, and it is where the programmatic machinery matters most.
eMarketer, Retail Media Forecast, H1 2026Measurement
Asked which methodology they rate most reliable for cross-channel measurement, US marketers put marketing mix modeling first. The question behind the ranking is structural: identity fragmentation broke the click path that last-touch attribution depended on, and the methods that survive are the ones that never needed a user-level identifier.
MMM rated most reliable at 46.9%
Marketing mix modeling leads the reliability ranking, with incrementality testing at 34.1% and last-click multi-touch attribution at 19.4%. These are reliability ratings from a single most-reliable question, not investment-intent figures, and the three values sum to 100.4% as published.
eMarketer/TransUnion, State of Cross-Channel Measurement, July 2025Attention measurement got a standard in November 2025
The IAB and MRC shipped Attention Measurement Guidelines v1.0, giving attention metrics a common definition buyers can plan against. A standard is the precondition for using a metric at the brief stage.
IAB/MRC, Attention Measurement Guidelines v1.0, November 2025The full methodology argument is in MMM is the cross-channel anchor again, and the spend picture in the US digital ad spend analysis.
How to cite these figures
Every number on this page is reported as published by its issuer. Cite the issuer and the publication, not this page.
Sources
IAB / PwC, Internet Advertising Revenue Report, published 2026 (FY2025 data); display-share figure from the FY2024 edition, published 2025
eMarketer, Programmatic Ad Spend Forecast, 2025
ANA/TAG TrustNet Benchmark, Q2 2025
ANA, Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study, December 2023 (historical baseline)
Nielsen Gauge, July 2025 and December 2025
eMarketer, CTV Ad Spending Forecast, 2025
eMarketer, Retail Media Forecast, H1 2026
eMarketer / TransUnion, State of Cross-Channel Measurement, July 2025
IAB/MRC, Attention Measurement Guidelines v1.0, November 2025
This page is reviewed quarterly and the visible date above reflects the last substantive update. The Q2 2025 supply-chain figures are the ANA/TAG TrustNet Benchmark; the ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study (December 2023) supplies the $0.36, 15% MFA and 64.5% PMP baselines, has not been re-run, and appears here as historical baseline only. The 46.9% / 34.1% / 19.4% split is a measurement-reliability rating from a single most-reliable question, not investment intent, and sums to 100.4% as published. Figures older than 2025 appear only where labeled as historical.