Australia's internet advertising market grew 14.0 percent year on year to reach 19.8 billion Australian dollars in the financial year ending June 30, 2026, according to the IAB Australia Internet Advertising Revenue Report compiled by PwC Australia and released on August 31, 2026. The result marks the sector's strongest financial-year growth since FY22 and outpaces the market's six-year average annual growth rate of 13.7 percent, according to the report.

The figures cover the twelve months to the end of June 2026 and were distributed publicly through a media release dated Monday, August 31, 2026, with IAB Australia circulating the headline findings to press and non-member subscribers the following day. Search, video and social formats drove the bulk of the expansion, while classifieds recorded its fastest financial-year growth since FY22 and government advertising entered the top five industry categories for the first time in the June quarter.

Search holds the largest share as spend nears record territory

Search advertising remained the single largest category, accounting for 43 percent of total market spend and reaching 8.6 billion Australian dollars, according to the report. That figure represents a new financial-year record for the category and a 13.2 percent increase over FY25. Search has now held the top position in Australia's internet advertising mix through multiple report cycles, though its share of the total pie has narrowed slightly as video expands faster in percentage terms.

Video advertising increased 18.8 percent year on year to reach 5.9 billion Australian dollars, according to the report, and now represents 30 percent of total spend, approaching one third of the market for the first time. Within that video total, social video was the standout format. It grew 29.5 percent year on year to 2.4 billion Australian dollars and now accounts for 41 percent of all video spend, up from 38 percent a year earlier, according to the report.

The shift inside video extends beyond format toward where that video is watched. Content media owners' inventory continued moving toward premium, trusted environments, according to the report. Connected TV represented 60 percent of publisher video expenditure in FY26, up from 51 percent in FY25. Desktop's share of that same publisher video spend fell sharply, from 37 percent to 25 percent, while mobile's share rose slightly, from 12 percent to 15 percent. PPC Land has tracked the mechanics of this shift in connected TV delivery, where server-guided ad insertion and legacy device constraints have become a recurring theme in Australian measurement discussions.

Classifieds, audio and non-video display broaden the growth base

Growth was not confined to search and video. Classifieds recorded double-digit financial-year growth for the first time since FY22, rising 12.6 percent to 3.1 billion Australian dollars, according to the report. Audio advertising grew 6.6 percent to 353 million Australian dollars, with podcasting the primary driver, up 10.1 percent and now representing 40 percent of total audio spend. Streaming audio, the other major audio sub-category, grew 4.3 percent over the same period.

Non-video general display advertising, which excludes video formats, increased 6.9 percent to 2.2 billion Australian dollars, according to the report. Within that category, infeed and native placements were the strongest contributor, up 10.9 percent year on year.

Industry category data compiled alongside the revenue figures shows the top five verticals by general display spend, Retail, Automotive, Entertainment and Media, Finance, and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, together accounted for 56 percent of content publishers' reported general display expenditure in FY26, according to the report. Retail's share rose to 17.8 percent from 17.2 percent, and Automotive climbed to 14.2 percent from 13.7 percent. Fast-Moving Consumer Goods eased to 6.1 percent from 6.4 percent, the only one of the top five categories to lose ground.

CEO points to spending outside the traditional advertiser base

Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia, commented on the annual results in the media release accompanying the report. "Search, video and social all continued to grow strongly in FY26," Le Roy said, according to the release. "A lot of the new spend is coming from outside the usual base. While many established advertisers are working with budgets that aren't growing, we're seeing new and increased investment from small and medium businesses, from retailers, and from overseas advertisers targeting Australian audiences."

Le Roy went further in characterizing how that spending behaves over time, rather than in bursts tied to particular retail moments. "Much of that activity is always-on rather than tied to traditional campaign cycles, which shows digital becoming a more consistent, everyday part of how brands reach Australians, not just something switched on for key retail or seasonal moments," Le Roy said, according to the release.

That framing matters for how the industry reads the topline growth figure. A market expanding because new categories of spender are entering it, rather than because existing advertisers are increasing budgets, implies a different set of pressures on inventory, pricing and measurement than a market growing purely through incumbent reinvestment. Whether that new demand proves durable through subsequent quarters is not something the FY26 report can settle on its own; it will depend on whether the June quarter's pace holds into the first half of FY27.

June quarter accelerates faster than the annual figure

The June 2026 quarter alone reached 5.4 billion Australian dollars, up 16.3 percent on the June 2025 quarter, according to the report, a faster pace than the 14.0 percent annual growth figure. Search advertising in the quarter increased 13.4 percent to 2,335 million Australian dollars. Video increased 22.6 percent to 1,677 million Australian dollars. Display, excluding video, rose 10.7 percent to 580 million Australian dollars. Classifieds increased 16.8 percent to 789 million Australian dollars, and audio rose 9.3 percent to 94 million Australian dollars.

Social video's quarterly growth outpaced its annual figure too, expanding 28.3 percent year on year in the June quarter and closing the gap with other video formats. It now represents 41 percent of total video spend for the quarter, against 52 percent held by other video formats combined, according to the report; a year earlier the split had been wider.

Podcast advertising hit a new quarterly peak of 40.0 million Australian dollars in June 2026, according to the report, up 13.1 percent on June 2025 and 22.6 percent on the prior March 2026 quarter. That sequential jump between March and June is notably larger than the year-on-year comparison, suggesting a concentration of podcast spend within the quarter itself rather than a smooth annual climb.

Government entered the top five industry categories for the June quarter for the first time, according to the report, with a 6.3 percent share, up from 5.3 percent a year earlier. Its entry displaced the FMCG and Health and Beauty category, which had held a top-five position in the prior year's quarter.

What the report measures and who compiled it

The IAB Australia Internet Advertising Revenue Report is compiled by PwC Australia and draws on data submitted by media owners, publishers and advertising platforms operating in the Australian market, according to the report. IAB Australia distributes two tiers of access to the underlying data: member organizations receive detailed breakdowns covering sector performance, format-level revenue, quarterly trends, category shifts, device usage and longer-term market trajectories, while non-members and press receive the media release summarizing overall market growth, key drivers and year-on-year changes.

That two-tier structure means the headline figures published in the release, and reproduced in this article, represent a summary layer rather than the full dataset. Detailed sector-by-sector breakdowns, including granular device-level and category-level splits beyond what appears in the release, remain available only to IAB Australia members through the full report.

Context against prior reporting periods

The FY26 result extends a run of double-digit annual growth that IAB Australia and PwC have now recorded across several consecutive reporting periods. The market reached 15.6 billion Australian dollars in FY24, growing 9.7 percentthat year. It then climbed to 17.2 billion Australian dollars in FY25, a 10.6 percent increase, with video already established as the fastest-growing major format at that point.

Separately, IAB Australia and PwC also publish figures on a calendar-year basis, which run on a different cycle than the financial-year totals featured in this report. The calendar year 2025 total reached 18.4 billion Australian dollars, up 11.5 percent, with video at 5.4 billion Australian dollars for that twelve-month period. The March 2026 quarter, reported separately, set a quarterly record of 4.9 billion Australian dollars, up 15.3 percent year on year, with video again the fastest-growing major segment at 20.4 percent growth to 1.4 billion Australian dollars.

Because financial-year and calendar-year figures are drawn from overlapping but distinct twelve-month windows, the totals are not directly interchangeable; a reader comparing the 19.8 billion Australian dollar FY26 figure against the 18.4 billion Australian dollar calendar 2025 figure is comparing periods that share nine months of overlap rather than the same window twice.

Why this matters for the marketing community

For marketers, publishers and platforms operating in or selling into the Australian market, the FY26 report offers a rare thing in digital advertising measurement: a single, independently compiled figure that spans nearly every major format and is drawn directly from the entities transacting the spend, rather than modeled from panel data or survey responses. PPC Land has covered how that distinction matters in practice when comparing this series against other Australian measurement products; the IAB Australia series captures internet advertising revenue reported by media owners and platforms directly, while alternative sources such as Nielsen's Ad Intel measure gross expenditure across major media at rate card. One approach captures a channel from the inside; the other estimates a category from the outside. The distinction affects how far any single headline number should be pushed as a proxy for the whole market.

The connected TV finding inside this report carries particular weight for buyers managing video budgets. A jump from 51 percent to 60 percent of publisher video spend flowing to connected TV in a single financial year is a fast structural move, and it lands alongside broader industry debate over how server-side and server-guided ad insertion perform on older television hardware, a topic IAB Australia itself examined in separate research published earlier in 2026. Buyers reallocating budget toward connected TV on the strength of headline growth figures are, in effect, also inheriting the measurement and delivery constraints that come with that inventory.

The government category's entry into the June quarter's top five is a smaller data point but a notable one for anyone tracking how public-sector communications spend behaves relative to commercial advertisers. A rise from 5.3 percent to 6.3 percent share in a single year, displacing an established consumer category, suggests either a specific cyclical event, such as a public information campaign or election-adjacent spend, or a more durable shift in how government bodies plan digital communications. The report as summarized does not specify which explanation applies, and that gap is worth flagging rather than resolving speculatively.

Finally, Le Roy's comment about "always-on" spending patterns replacing seasonal campaign cycles has implications for how sales teams and planners forecast demand. If new entrants, particularly small and medium businesses and overseas advertisers targeting Australian audiences, are sustaining spend outside the traditional retail calendar, that changes the shape of inventory demand across the year rather than concentrating it around known peaks. Whether that pattern persists, or whether it reflects a temporary confluence of factors specific to FY26, will only become clear in subsequent reporting periods.

Timeline

  • September 2024: Australian digital advertising reached 15.6 billion Australian dollars in FY24, growing 9.7 percent year on year.
  • August 28, 2025: IAB Australia released the Internet Advertising Revenue Report for FY25, recording 17.2 billion Australian dollars in total spend.
  • March 2, 2026: IAB Australia and PwC Australia released the calendar year 2025 report, confirming 18.4 billion Australian dollars in total spend and 11.5 percent annual growth.
  • May 28, 2026: IAB Australia published the Q1 2026 Internet Advertising Revenue Report, showing the market reached 4.9 billion Australian dollars for the quarter, up 15.3 percent year on year.
  • Monday, August 31, 2026: IAB Australia released the Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the financial year and June quarter ended June 30, 2026, recording 19.8 billion Australian dollars in total FY26 spend, up 14.0 percent year on year.
  • Tuesday, September 1, 2026: IAB Australia distributed the headline findings to press and non-member subscribers via email.

Summary

Who: IAB Australia, the peak trade association for online advertising in Australia, released the report in partnership with PwC Australia, which compiled the underlying data from media owners, publishers and advertising platforms. Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia, provided the commentary accompanying the release.

What: The Internet Advertising Revenue Report recorded 19.8 billion Australian dollars in total internet advertising spend for the financial year ended June 30, 2026, a 14.0 percent increase over FY25, alongside a 5.4 billion Australian dollar June quarter result, up 16.3 percent year on year. Search, video and classifieds each posted notable gains, and government entered the quarter's top five industry categories for the first time.

When: The report covers the financial year and quarter ended June 30, 2026. IAB Australia released it publicly on Monday, August 31, 2026, and distributed the headline findings by email on Tuesday, September 1, 2026.

Where: The data covers the Australian internet advertising market, compiled from domestic media owners, publishers and advertising platforms operating in Australia.

Why: The result represents the market's strongest financial-year growth since FY22 and confirms video's continued shift toward connected TV and social formats, while broader participation from small and medium businesses, retailers and overseas advertisers points to spending patterns less tied to traditional seasonal campaign cycles.