The headline numbers from the Q1 2025 earnings season were large enough to stop the room. Meta posted advertising revenue growth of 33 percent. Google Search grew 19 percent year on year. Amazon advertising was up 24 percent. Those figures describe a digital advertising market expanding at a pace few would have predicted given the macroeconomic uncertainty of recent quarters. But the more consequential story, according to a new episode of the Unfiltered Media Podcast, lies not in the headline rates themselves - it lies in where that growth is actually coming from.

The episode, titled "Meta, Google, Amazon all post Q1 results - Analysis and market reaction," was published on April 30, 2025, and is available on Spotify and at media-unfiltered.com. In it, media analyst Ian Whittaker and host Justin Lebbon work through each platform's quarterly performance and arrive at a thesis that cuts against the standard holding-company narrative: the visible part of the global ad market is growing slowly, while a much larger, mostly invisible part is growing fast - and doing so entirely outside the agency system.

The iceberg below the surface

Whittaker introduces a framing he calls the "iceberg effect in advertising." According to the podcast, "the visible part of the global ad market - the part agencies and holdcos see, sell into, and report on - is the brand-led, large-advertiser piece. That is the iceberg above the waterline. It is also growing slowly, as the results from the agencies suggest."

What sits below is the majority of actual spend. "My estimate is that small and medium business advertising is around half of all global ad spend," Whittaker says on the podcast, "and the vast majority of it flows directly into the platforms with no agency or holdco in the chain." Meta has spoken publicly about ten million advertisers on its platform. Google Search is similarly weighted. Amazon's third-party seller base follows the same shape.

That framing helps reconcile two sets of results that would otherwise appear contradictory. The holding companies report a market growing at a moderate pace. The platforms report something considerably faster. Both readings can be accurate simultaneously if they are measuring different segments of the same market - one above the waterline, one below.

Lebbon brings specific data to bear. Drawing on guideline data covering major holdcos and large independent agencies across several markets, he notes that Meta's year-on-year advertising growth among large advertisers ran at roughly 27 percent in the United States between 2023 and 2024. By the 2024-to-2025 comparison period, that same cohort had decelerated to around 14 percent in the US, 10 percent in the UK, and 4.5 percent in Canada. "When you look at the total spend across those markets," Lebbon says on the podcast, "it's down from 23 percent growth between '23 and '24 down to 12.8 percent for those markets. It's a fairly significant decline."

Yet Meta's total advertising revenues kept expanding rapidly. The delta points directly to the SMB layer. "We believe that most of their growth is coming from the SMB side of the industry where they rely on 85 percent of their market to grow their business," Lebbon says. Whittaker concurs: "you look at the growth rates from larger advertisers, compare them with the full year advertising growth rate for somebody like a Meta, and it's pretty clear that in terms of SMEs, they are really fuelling" the platform's expansion, alongside what he describes as a material contribution from Chinese-based advertisers.

PPC Land's coverage of Meta's Q1 2025 earnings confirms that Meta's advertising revenue reached $41.39 billion in Q1 2025, with the online commerce vertical identified as the largest advertiser category and the biggest single contributor to year-on-year revenue growth - a base that skews heavily toward smaller advertisers.

Google: search accelerates as the AI disruption narrative stalls

Of the three platforms covered in the episode, Google's Q1 results generated the most pointed commentary. Search advertising was up 19 percent year on year, a step up from 17 percent in the prior comparable period. Total advertising growth came in at 13 percent. The US market grew 23 percent compared to 17 percent the prior year, while EMEA grew 12 percent and APAC 22 percent.

"The talk of Cannes last year and the year before was all about the introduction of AI and the impact that might have on search revenues," Lebbon says on the podcast. "Didn't seem to happen. Up 19 percent compared to 17 percent in the previous year, which is absolutely crazy."

Whittaker takes that a step further. "What you would say is not only is AI not impacting its revenues at the moment, but there's a case for arguing that it could actually be accelerating them," he says. He points to higher query volumes driven by AI Overviews as a possible mechanism, one that would support rather than suppress advertising demand.

YouTube, by contrast, grew 11 percent - below Search for several consecutive quarters now. "There was a time of course when YouTube actually was growing ahead of search and was seen as the part of the business that was sort of accelerating the advertising growth rate," Whittaker says. "Whereas now, and it's been the case for the past few quarters, it's actually trended below search." He leaves open whether that is structural or cyclical.

The EMEA-US gap commands attention. Whittaker says he has "not really seen that wide a gap in quite a while, certainly on my recollection of results." He flags it as something to track carefully. One related question raised on the podcast is whether changes to de minimis tariff rules affecting Chinese exporters shipping to the US have begun to affect platform spend. The Q1 data provides no signal of impact. "So far that has not showed up in any of the numbers, whether it's Amazon, Meta or indeed Google," Whittaker says.

Cloud performance is where Whittaker identifies the most technically significant result. Alphabet's cloud revenues grew 63 percent in Q1. AWS grew 28 percent - its fastest rate in fifteen quarters. Azure was up 40 percent. "These are not small numbers, small growth rates," Whittaker says on the podcast, "especially when you consider the large bases they're coming from." He reads this as the clearest signal that the platforms' capital investment in AI infrastructure is generating measurable commercial returns - not just future optionality, but current revenue acceleration.

Alphabet announced capital expenditure of nearly $200 billion for AI. Markets did not react negatively. Lebbon observes that the markets "didn't even blink." Whittaker explains the logic: "the way they're looking at things is to say they're spending and we can translate it into growth." Search accelerated. Cloud growth accelerated sharply. The capital allocation appears legible to investors in a way that spending without visible revenue impact would not be.

PPC Land's Google Q1 2025 earnings coverage reports that Alphabet's consolidated revenues reached $90.2 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, a 12 percent year-on-year increase, and that AI Overviews now reached over 1.5 billion users monthly at the time of the earnings announcement.

Meta: one engine running fast, concentrated risk

Meta's advertising results were strong by most measures. Advertising revenues, according to Lebbon on the podcast, represent 98 percent of Meta's total revenues. That concentration sits at the centre of the structural question hanging over the stock, even as the operating figures impress.

According to Lebbon, Meta increased its pricing by roughly 12 percent while simultaneously growing available impressions by about 19 percent. He attributes both to AI: more content generated on the platforms expands inventory, while AI-based planning and execution tools improve how that inventory is matched and priced. "I'd say they're doing that using AI," Lebbon says on the podcast.

WhatsApp is growing as a separate commercial asset. The platform was handling ten million business conversations per week at the time of recording, up from one million at the start of the year - a tenfold increase in less than twelve months.

Whittaker's concern centres on risk concentration. "Bear in mind it's only really got one engine of growth and that's this advertising revenue business," he says of Meta. Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet carry multiple revenue streams; risk is distributed. Meta is different. "The markets, what they really are concerned about is not necessarily growth but actually sort of reducing risk. They're looking at Meta and saying it's doing extremely well now... but it is reliant on this one pillar," Whittaker says on the podcast.

Q2 guidance, read by some analysts as slightly conservative, added to that sensitivity. Whittaker notes a "question mark whether that was intentionally conservative" but acknowledges the market reaction was real regardless.

The EU's Digital Markets Act compliance pressure comes up on the podcast. Lebbon raises the EU's finding that Meta is in breach and asks whether large-brand advertisers are beginning to respond. Whittaker says: "I think there's possibly an element of that," but frames it as a marginal factor. The primary driver of any spend reallocation, he argues, would be evidence from measurement - not moral pressure alone.

That reading leads to a direct exchange on incrementality testing. Lebbon says he was working with advertisers "switching off certain aspects of their media spend to see if it's actually delivering anything." Whittaker connects this to a specific historical precedent: Adidas's decision to switch off Google spending in Latin America after geo testing showed no detectable incremental impact. "If they're geo switching off and saying we don't see any impact," Whittaker says on the podcast, "then there was a clear case for saying actually the spend isn't delivering results, you switch it off."

The question of where reallocated large-brand spend goes also surfaces. Both speakers discuss Bloomberg's reported estimate of around 60 percent revenue growth expected at TikTok in 2025. Lebbon's working hypothesis is that the money is not crossing to entirely different platforms but is shifting internally - from brand formats to performance formats within the same platforms. "I think they switch it off," he says of Google specifically, "but the performance bucket keeps the money."

Amazon: the inverted retailer

Amazon's advertising growth of 22 percent on a currency-adjusted basis for Q1 2025 is framed in the episode as structurally underappreciated, partly because the company's identity as a retailer persists in public perception even though the profitability structure has shifted substantially.

"The traditional view of Amazon is it's a retailer with all the AWS and advertising on the side," Whittaker says on the podcast. "Certainly from a profitability standpoint, I'd argue that that's inverted. Really, you'd say that the advertising and AWS that are really driving the operating profit of the business and actually the retail commerce side, you could argue, depending on how you select the numbers, is actually potentially losing money."

Advertising at Amazon carries a "very high drop through rate when it comes from revenues down to profit," Whittaker notes. That high margin means advertising revenue converts to operating profit at a proportion well above what the retail business achieves. In combination with AWS, the advertising segment is what funds Amazon's capital investment program. Annualised from Q1, that AI spend implies a figure "close to $200 billion altogether" for 2026.

Amazon shares rose around 4 percent in post-market trading following the results. Whittaker reads this as a reflection of investor comfort with the company's diversified structure. "Because the business is diversified, we feel a little bit more comfortable about it," he says, describing the investor logic. Each major revenue line - retail, AWS, advertising, streaming - provides a separate signal; no single line failure destroys the investment thesis.

PPC Land's Q1 2025 Amazon advertising coverage confirms that Amazon's advertising services generated $13.9 billion in Q1 2025, up 19 percent year on year, while overall company revenue reached $155.7 billion with operating income climbing to $18.4 billion, a 20 percent year-on-year increase.

Compounding versus disruption

The most structural argument in both the podcast and Whittaker's accompanying LinkedIn post concerns what he calls "rhythm." The core claim is that the platforms' strong Q1 numbers are not the product of new propositions but of disciplined execution of existing ones. "The platforms have found models that work, and they are compounding on them," Whittaker writes. "The big numbers this week were not the result of new propositions but the result of doing what they already do, but better."

He draws a parallel to the music industry - labels that stabilised streaming royalties, tightened collection infrastructure, and moved early into AI through licensing rather than litigation. The result is what Whittaker calls a sector that "has stopped fighting its model and started compounding on it to deliver growth." The conclusion he draws for mature businesses more broadly: "mature businesses do not usually win on radical bets. They win on disciplined repetition of what already works, with marginal improvement on top."

The qualifications he attaches are equally specific. Compounding requires the underlying model to keep working. For the hyperscalers, maintaining the current growth trajectory now requires $190 billion in annual capital expenditure - "a different proposition to 2018 Big Tech," Whittaker writes. For the music labels, the assumption is that platforms remain distribution partners rather than becoming disintermediators. "Both assumptions are conditional," he states.

For advertising practitioners specifically, the podcast raises a question that the numbers alone do not resolve: whether the SMB growth driving platform revenues is itself durable. If geo testing and incrementality measurement - the techniques Lebbon describes observing among his advertiser clients - spread further down into the SMB segment, the feedback loops governing that layer of spend could tighten considerably. The platforms' Q1 2025 numbers show no sign of that yet. The rate at which such methods propagate through the SMB base, however, is the kind of change that tends not to show up until it already has.

PPC Land's analysis of the digital advertising triopoly reports that Amazon, Google, and Meta collectively controlled approximately 72 percent of US digital advertising spend in 2025, according to EMARKETER research published July 29, 2025 - a concentration that the Q1 figures suggest was already building through the opening quarter of the year.

Timeline

  • 2023-2024: Large-advertiser Meta spend grows approximately 27 percent year on year in the US, 15 percent in the UK, and close to 10 percent in Canada, according to guideline data cited on the Unfiltered Media Podcast
  • Q1 2025 (quarter ended March 31, 2025): Google Search advertising grows 19 percent year on year, accelerating from 17 percent in the prior period; YouTube grows 11 percent; total Google advertising growth reaches 13 percent; US market up 23 percent, EMEA up 12 percent, APAC up 22 percent; Alphabet cloud revenues grow 63 percent; AWS grows 28 percent, its fastest rate in fifteen quarters; Azure grows 40 percent; Alphabet consolidated revenues reach $90.2 billion
  • Q1 2025: Meta advertising revenue reaches $41.39 billion, growing 16 percent year on year; price per ad rises approximately 12 percent; impressions grow approximately 19 percent; WhatsApp business conversations reach ten million per week, up from one million at the start of the year; advertising represents 98 percent of total revenues
  • Q1 2025: Amazon advertising services generate $13.9 billion, up 19 percent year on year; total company revenue reaches $155.7 billion; operating income climbs 20 percent to $18.4 billion; Amazon shares rise approximately 4 percent post-market
  • 2024-2025: Large-advertiser Meta spend decelerates to approximately 14 percent growth in the US, 10 percent in the UK, and 4.5 percent in Canada; total spend across large-advertiser markets falls from 23 percent growth to 12.8 percent growth
  • April 30, 2025: Ian Whittaker publishes LinkedIn post outlining the "iceberg effect" framing; Unfiltered Media Podcast episode covering Q1 results for Meta, Google, and Amazon is released
  • 2025 (full year): Amazon, Google, and Meta collectively control approximately 72 percent of US digital advertising spend, according to EMARKETER data published July 29, 2025

Summary

Who: Ian Whittaker, media and capital markets analyst, and Justin Lebbon, host of the Unfiltered Media Podcast. The platforms covered are Alphabet (Google Search, YouTube, Google Cloud), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), and Amazon (advertising services, AWS).

What: An analysis of Q1 2025 advertising results from Google, Meta, and Amazon, published April 30, 2025 as a podcast episode and an accompanying LinkedIn post. The central argument is that platform advertising growth is driven primarily by small and medium businesses spending directly on the platforms, not by large brands managed through agencies. Additional topics include AI capital expenditure, the absence of any visible impact from de minimis tariff changes, Meta's single-engine risk profile, Amazon's inverted profit structure, the deceleration of large-advertiser spend, and the role of geo testing and incrementality measurement in shaping future advertiser behaviour.

When: The quarterly results cover the period ending March 31, 2025. Alphabet and Meta reported earnings on April 29, 2025. Amazon reported the same week. The Unfiltered Media Podcast episode and Whittaker's LinkedIn post were both published on April 30, 2025.

Where: The podcast is available at media-unfiltered.com and on Spotify. Whittaker's analysis was also published on his LinkedIn profile. The underlying financial results were disclosed on Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon investor relations channels.

Why: The Q1 2025 results matter for the marketing industry because they reveal a structural split between the segment of the market visible to agencies and the segment flowing directly to platforms. If the estimate that SMB advertising accounts for roughly half of all global ad spend is accurate, then holding-company revenue trends are a systematically poor proxy for overall market health. The results also raise medium-term questions: about whether AI capital expenditure at $190-200 billion per year annually can continue to generate legible returns; about whether EU regulatory pressure on Meta begins to move large-brand budget decisions; and about whether incrementality testing methods spreading further into the SMB base could, over time, change the conditions that have produced the current growth rates.

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