The Interactive Advertising Bureau today raised its full-year forecast for United States advertising spend to 12.3% year-over-year growth, an increase of 2.8 percentage points over the 9.5% projection it issued in January. The revision, published on September 10, 2026 as the 2026 Outlook Study: September Update, draws on responses from more than 200 brand and agency ad investment decision-makers and attributes the stronger outlook to a first half that outperformed expectations, lifted by major cyclical events and by easing concern over the wider economy.

In Short

A big advertising trade group asked over 200 companies how much they plan to spend on ads this year, and the answer came back higher than what those same companies said back in January. The main reasons are that big events like the Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup pulled in a lot of ad money, and businesses feel a little less nervous about the economy than they did. At the same time, marketers say the way people find products through AI chatbots is changing so fast that most of them are not yet sure how to measure whether their ads are working there.

What the update changed

The headline figure moved from a January projection of 9.5% to a September projection of 12.3%, according to IAB. That earlier number was reported by PPC Land when the original 2026 Outlook Study framed agentic AI as a central growth driver, with two-thirds of surveyed advertisers concentrating on autonomous systems for campaign execution. The September revision keeps that AI framing but adds a stronger performance base beneath it.

IAB tied the upgrade to a specific set of drivers. The first half was carried by concentrated demand from live events, and buyer worry about macroeconomic headwinds softened over the period. The study also records a shift in what advertisers want their spending to achieve, moving toward customer acquisition and brand equity as shoppers grow more selective and as AI reshapes the point at which people discover and evaluate brands.

David Cohen, chief executive of IAB, framed the environment as favorable but not easy. "The first half was strong, major live events delivered, and advertisers have increasingly powerful tools in their arsenal to find and engage customers," according to Cohen. He added that the economy still holds real uncertainty: "There is growth to be found, but there are no easy wins. When consumers are considering their next purchase, the brands that win will be connecting with them at the right time, in the right context, and with a compelling message."

Acquisition overtakes retention as the priority

The clearest movement in advertiser intent sits in what marketers say they want media investment to accomplish. Customer acquisition, described in the study as the usual top goal, rose nine percentage points since January to 63%. Brand equity climbed six points to 43%. Repeat purchases held roughly flat at 24%, after nearly doubling as a stated priority since 2024.

IAB links the pattern to consumer behavior under sustained price pressure. Persistent inflation and cautious sentiment have made shoppers more willing to switch brands and retailers and to trade down, which the study frames as both a defensive problem and an opening. Brands face pressure to reinforce their standing while gaining a chance to capture buyers who are actively reconsidering their choices.

Chris Bruderle, vice president of industry insights and content strategy at IAB, described the consumer side of that shift. "Consumers are becoming more discerning. They're switching brands, paying for lower-priced brands and looking at store brands," according to Bruderle. He set out the two consequences the organization draws from it: brands need to make sure their equity is strong, particularly inside AI environments, and if people are more willing to switch, there is an opening to acquire new customers.

Measuring the AI-mediated journey becomes the central problem

Much of the September update turns on a measurement gap that marketers say is widening faster than their tools can close it. Adapting to evolving consumer behavior, including AI-driven search, now ranks as the top media investment challenge, cited by 44% of buyers. Concern about low-quality AI-generated content, the phenomenon the study labels AI slop, follows at 38%.

Where buyers are increasing their focus reflects the same reorientation. Optimizing content for AI-generated answers is now the leading area of increased attention at 76%, followed by work on AI large language models at 72%. Focus on generative AI use within media campaigns stands at 69%, down from 78% in January, a decline the numbers place alongside rising attention to how brands appear inside AI outputs rather than how AI is used to produce campaigns.

Bruderle characterized the change as a shift in the question marketers are asking. "What we are seeing is a pretty meaningful evolution in the AI conversation," according to Bruderle. "Marketers have spent a lot of time asking, 'How can I use AI?' Now the question is becoming, 'How do I reach a consumer who uses AI?' People are discovering products and evaluating brands inside these environments. Marketers want to understand how their brands show up in those conversations and how that activity connects to everything else they know about the customer journey."

The scale of the measurement problem is quantified directly in the study. A share of 86% of buyers are already changing, or expect to change within the next 12 months, how they measure media performance because of conversational AI tools and AI agents. The most common response, selected by 48% of buyers, is measuring brand visibility and citations directly inside AI tools. Others lean on branded search and direct traffic as proxies, add third-party AI discovery analysis tools, monitor AI-platform interactions and referrals, or increase incrementality testing.

Connecting those signals into a single view remains the sticking point. A share of 45% of buyers name the difficulty of comparing AI-driven and traditional customer journeys as their top measurement challenge. Bruderle described the gap as the industry's current work: "There are important conversations about brands and products happening inside AI environments every day, and marketers are still building the visibility they need into that journey. They know the consumer is there. They know these experiences can influence a purchase. Now they are figuring out how to connect those interactions to the signals and outcomes they have measured for years."

That difficulty has a documented infrastructure dimension outside this study. An IAB measurement framework published in August 2026 recorded that only 16% of brands systematically track their visibility inside AI-generated answers, attributing the shortfall partly to the absence of a shared definition of a citation, with more than twenty vendors selling tools that return materially different results for the same brand in the same week. The September Update's measurement findings sit on top of that unresolved definitional problem.

A wider set of channels for winning attention

As discovery fragments across traditional search, conversational AI, commerce platforms, social media, and other environments, the study records advertisers broadening the ad types they intend to increase. Creator and influencer advertising and partnerships lead at 54%. Demo-targeted and cohort-based advertising follows at 53%. Publishers with first-party data sit at 48%, and contextual advertising at 45%.

IAB frames those four priorities as parts of one effort to build trust, identify valuable audiences, and stay visible as discovery scatters. Bruderle connected them: "The pieces really do connect. If consumers are moving across more places to discover products, marketers have to think differently about how they earn trust, how they identify the right audiences, and how their content gets found. Visibility is becoming part of the media strategy in a much broader way. It includes the creator someone trusts, the environment where an ad appears, and increasingly what an AI platform says when someone asks about your category or your brand."

The emphasis on creators aligns with figures IAB has been publishing separately. The trade body put United States creator advertising spend at $44 billion for 2026, a rate of growth it describes as roughly four times faster than the broader advertising market, and consolidated its CreatorFronts, Podcast Upfront and PlayFronts marketplaces into a single week for the first time.

Channel-level revisions

Digital channels continue to carry the market, and every major digital line moved up against its January projection. Social media now carries a projected 16.5% growth rate, up 1.9 points from the 14.6% forecast in January. Connected TV was revised to 15.6%, up 1.8 points from 13.8%. Commerce media rose to 13.6%, up 1.5 points from 12.1%.

The picture is not uniformly higher. Digital video excluding CTV eased to 9.4% from 9.6%, a decline of 0.2 points. Podcasts edged up to 8.7% from 8.6%. Paid search slipped to 8.1% from 8.2%. Digital out-of-home fell to 7.0% from 7.4%, a drop of 0.4 points. Linear television remains in contraction but less sharply, at -1.5% against a January projection of -1.7%.

The three fastest-growing lines were also the three most heavily revised upward. Social media, connected TV, and commerce media each gained more than a full point over their earlier projections, while the search and out-of-home lines moved down. The gap that opened between them widens the distance between channels tied to fragmented, data-rich discovery and those anchored to older buying patterns.

Context on PPC Land

The revision arrives inside a year of forecasts that have been moving in the same direction across the industry. WPP Media's midyear 2026 report, covered when it projected 4.4% global growth to $1.3 trillion with United States growth at 11.9%, placed AI infrastructure spending at the center of the American acceleration and put commerce advertising ahead of television globally for the first time. IAB's 12.3% United States figure lands above that WPP domestic estimate, though the two use different methods and scopes.

The AI-measurement theme running through the September Update connects to a body of PPC Land reporting on how discovery is shifting. The publication has documented that EMARKETER expects United States AI ad spending to more than double to $68.25 billion by 2030, while noting that over 80% of that money is projected to flow next to AI content rather than inside chatbots, a distinction that separates AI as an advertising surface from AI as a campaign-management layer. That same separation runs through the demand for autonomous execution captured in agentic AI tools, which the January study had already identified as a growth driver.

The consumer-behavior claims underlying the acquisition shift also have external corroboration in the archive. Research covered by PPC Land found ChatGPT referrals to business-to-business sites up 303% year over year, evidence of the traffic redistribution that makes AI visibility a live commercial question rather than a theoretical one. On the channel side, the continued strength of CTV reflected in IAB's revised 15.6% projection tracks with separate reporting that ad-supported streaming now reaches a large United States audience and that connected television is approaching 43% of total television advertising budgets.

For the marketing community, the update carries three practical signals. The upward revision confirms that live-event demand and steadier macro sentiment translated into real spending in the first half, not just stated intent. The nine-point jump in customer acquisition indicates budgets are tilting toward winning undecided buyers rather than defending existing ones, a shift with direct consequences for how campaigns are structured and measured. And the finding that 86% of buyers expect AI to change their measurement approach within a year marks measurement, not media buying, as the unresolved bottleneck heading into the second half.

IAB published the full 2026 Outlook Study: September Update, described as a snapshot of United States ad spend, opportunities, and strategies for growth, ahead of its September marketplace series. That series brings together CreatorFronts, Podcast Upfront and PlayFronts in New York from September 15 to 17.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Interactive Advertising Bureau, the trade organization for the digital advertising ecosystem, with commentary from chief executive David Cohen and from Chris Bruderle, vice president of industry insights and content strategy. The forecast draws on more than 200 brand and agency ad investment decision-makers.

What: IAB raised its full-year 2026 United States advertising spend forecast to 12.3% year-over-year growth, up 2.8 percentage points from its 9.5% January projection. The update also records customer acquisition rising to 63% as a stated media goal, 86% of buyers expecting AI to change how they measure media within 12 months, and upward revisions to social media (16.5%), CTV (15.6%), and commerce media (13.6%).

When: Published September 10, 2026, as the 2026 Outlook Study: September Update, ahead of IAB's marketplace series running September 15 to 17.

Where: The United States advertising market, with the study released from New York.

Why: A stronger-than-expected first half, lifted by cyclical events including the Winter Olympics and FIFA World Cup and by easing macroeconomic concern, raised the outlook. Alongside the growth figure, the study documents a shift toward acquisition as consumers grow more willing to switch brands, and a measurement problem created by AI-driven discovery that most buyers say they have not yet solved.