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The Big Get Bigger, the Formats Shift: Two Charts That Explain the Last 5 Years of Digital Advertising
June 29, 2026
Even as digital advertising in the U.S. has increased 12% per year from 2021 to 2025, the industry is consolidating and the popularity of rich media is where advertisers are spending their dollars. Two charts from the PWC/IAB report, Internet Advertising Revenue Report, Full-year 2025 results, concisely shows these trends.
“The Internet revenue concentration” chart sketches out the marked increased of industry concentration, since “The Top 10” grow from 81% of the total revenue in 2024 to 84% in 2025. Clearly, advertisers are migrating away from independent publishers and smaller ad networks to the big guys because of the ease of use in advertising on them; and the results must be better, or they wouldn't be there. They are also the keeper of the keys for AI. IAB states that AI has transitioned from an optional feature into the "infrastructure layer through which discovery, commerce, and media execution operate."
Although, the report does not explicitly name individual corporations, the tech giants take up at 6 of those spots:
- Alphabet (Google & YouTube)
- Meta (Facebook & Instagram):
- Amazon (their commerce network for both search, display and video)
- Microsoft (including LinkedIn & Bing)
- ByteDance (TikTok):
- Apple
“The Advertising format by share” chart tracks the structural evolution of digital layouts, showing a steady reallocation of spending away from static text-based formats of Search and Display towards rich, dynamic media of Video and Audio. Although Search maintains the largest absolute share of the ecosystem, its growth momentum has decelerated.
Read the full report.
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