The Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report published on May 5, 2026, confirmed that UK advertising spend grew by 6.4% in 2025 to reach £46.7 billion. The trade association for UK ad agencies, the IPA, called the findings "fantastic." But a closer reading of what drove that growth - and who captured it - tells a more complicated story.

According to journalist and industry analyst Omar Oakes, writing in his Substack newsletter Ad-verse Reactions on May 5, 2026, the figure deserves more scrutiny than it typically receives. Three companies, Alphabet (Google), Meta, and Amazon, collectively account for two of every three pounds spent on UK advertising services. That leaves just £15 billion for the entire remainder of the media industry: television, audio, publishers, out-of-home, and everything else.

The numbers from Big Tech's Q1 2026 earnings reports make the asymmetry tangible. According to Oakes, Alphabet posted 22% year-on-year revenue growth in Q1 to $109.9 billion. Meta reported 33% year-on-year growth to $56.3 billion. Amazon's advertising business grew 24% year on year to $17.2 billion. These are not recovering businesses or emerging challengers. They are already enormous companies, still growing at rates that most media organisations would consider exceptional even in their best years.

The structure of the market

How did the advertising industry arrive at this level of concentration? The answer lies partly in the types of advertisers now fueling digital growth. According to Oakes, citing the WARC Global Ad Trends Report: Media's New Normal, which he co-authored in December 2025, a new wave of digital-native budgets has entered advertising with little connection to household spending power. Small and medium enterprises, trade-marketing funds, retail media networks, and certain technology and electronics verticals are pouring money into digital ecosystems that promise speed and measurable performance.

These budgets were built in search, social, and retail media - and they have stayed there. They optimise for immediate results rather than channels that build long-term brand equity. As the PPC Land analysis of Big Tech Q1 results shows, millions of SMBs outside agency chains - not large brands - are fuelling platform advertising growth at an accelerating rate.

In fast-growing categories such as clothing, electronics, and cross-border e-commerce, almost 80% of incremental spending now flows directly into retail media, paid search, and social platforms, according to the WARC data cited by Oakes. The remaining 20% is shared across the entire rest of the media industry. This is not a gradual drift. It is a structural redirection of new money.

Low-attention media now dominates investment

One of the most striking data points concerns the shift in media quality. According to Oakes, UK advertising spend on low-attention media has risen from 32% of total investment in 2015 to 70% in 2025. High-attention media - the environments where research suggests advertising builds brand recall and long-term preference - has declined from 68% to 30% over the same decade.

The shift carries implications beyond aesthetics or editorial preference. Attention metrics have emerged as a growing focus across the industry, precisely because reach and impression volume can mask significant differences in actual engagement. According to Oakes, only 25% of campaigns achieve their effectiveness potential, even though 80% achieve their reach potential. The industry has built measurement infrastructure that proves the easy thing, not the important thing.

That gap - between what is measured and what matters - sits at the centre of Oakes's critique. He is not arguing that digital advertising fails advertisers in every case. He is arguing that the collective metrics the industry uses to assess itself are structurally incapable of surfacing the problem.

The ruler problem

The AA/WARC report itself underwent a methodology change. According to Oakes, the TV numbers did not, until fairly recently, properly account for streaming revenue - a significant omission given the pace of streaming media growth. The adjustment passed without significant comment in trade press coverage.

This matters not just as a technical note but as a symptom. According to Oakes, "measurement is never neutral; it reflects the interests of whoever holds it." The platforms built attribution models that credit themselves. The dashboards governing performance budgets were designed by parties with a stake in what those dashboards conclude. When the methodology changes, Oakes argues, the first question should be who benefits.

The consultation forum shaping the AA/WARC report includes representatives from trade bodies with a vested interest in a growth narrative. That does not necessarily mean the numbers are wrong. But it does mean the headline figure arrives pre-filtered through organisations whose incentives point in a particular direction.

A two-speed market

The UK ad market is not growing uniformly. According to the WARC analysis cited by Oakes, legacy advertising categories - traditional brand advertisers in established consumer goods sectors - have broadly stable spending. It is the newer categories, SMEs, cross-border e-commerce players (including Chinese businesses operating below the de minimis price threshold), and performance-oriented brands, that are driving explosive growth. And almost all of that incremental spend flows to the major platforms.

Justin Lebbon, a founder and board advisor, shared Oakes's analysis on LinkedIn on May 5, 2026, calling it an "excellent piece" and summarising the implications starkly: "This is bad for the UK. This isn't based on marketing science and what is effective. This is creating a triopoly of (mostly) garbage media." Lebbon highlighted the same figures Oakes cited - the 80% reach achievement versus 25% effectiveness achievement - and posed the question directly to CFOs: cheap reach is crap.

This market concentration dynamic is not confined to the UK. Across the United States, Amazon, Google, and Meta collectively controlled approximately 72% of US digital advertising spend in 2025, according to EMARKETER research published in July 2025. The UK's two-thirds figure is consistent with a global pattern, not an anomaly.

Retail media as the engine

Much of the new money flowing into the platforms arrives under the banner of retail media - advertising sold by retailers and platforms against purchase-intent signals from their own first-party data. European retail media spending reached 13.7 billion euros in 2024, growing 21.1% compared to the prior year, according to IAB Europe data published in October 2025. That growth rate is more than triple the pace of broader European ad market expansion.

In the UK specifically, online retail media hit £1.5 billion in the first half of 2025 alone, according to IAB UK data. The full-year projection for UK digital advertising spending stands at £45 billion by 2026, according to IAB UK figures published in September 2025. Retail media is positioned as a core channel, not a supplementary one.

The retail media expansion explains part of the concentration dynamic. Retail media spend, by definition, flows primarily to the largest platforms with the most developed commerce advertising infrastructure - Amazon above all, but also Google Shopping and Meta's catalogue-linked formats. When brands invest in retail media, they are largely investing in the same three companies already absorbing the majority of UK ad spend.

Why industry bodies repeat the headline

Oakes's sharpest observations concern not the platforms themselves but the industry's response to the data. He argues that the 6.4% figure gets cited at conferences and placed in new business decks because it provides comfort - and because questioning it carries a high cost.

According to Oakes, most senior practitioners in a room presenting the 6.4% figure already know that their publisher clients' revenues are declining, that independent agencies are being squeezed, and that incremental budgets are going to Meta's self-serve platform before reaching them. The knowledge is present. What is also present is what Oakes calls "the seductive power of the happy-clappy narrative."

Questioning the framing means questioning clients, platforms, trade bodies, and the entire data infrastructure that businesses are built around. It means telling a board that the market you claimed expertise in is consolidating in ways that structurally reduce your relevance. According to Oakes, two decades of decisions - about programmatic adoption, platform dependency, and measurement infrastructure - contributed to the conditions that the headline number now obscures.

Market health versus market growth

There is an important distinction between a market that is growing and a market that is healthy. The UK advertising market is growing. According to the data, it grew 6.4% in 2025. But according to Oakes, it is simultaneously a market that "has learned to describe itself as healthy using metrics that can't see what's wrong with it."

The FTC investigation into Google and Amazon over search ad pricing disclosures captures a parallel tension at the regulatory level - concerns that the platforms' dominance extends into the pricing and attribution mechanisms advertisers rely on. A Virginia judge found that Google maintained illegal monopolies in digital advertising markets. The UK market data sits within that broader legal and competitive context.

Global advertising revenue reached $1.14 trillion in 2025, according to WPP Media projections published in December 2025. Commerce advertising, at $178.2 billion, surpassed television advertising for the first time. Commerce media is dominated by the same three companies absorbing two-thirds of UK spend. The global and domestic pictures are consistent.

What comes next

Oakes does not offer a remedy. His argument is diagnostic. The question he poses is whether the industry's most senior practitioners will continue accepting flattering headlines that their own private knowledge contradicts.

For the marketing community, the issue is structural. UK advertisers are already responding to mounting concerns about media quality, brand safety, and the limits of platform-reported metrics. According to IAS research published in January 2026, 82% of UK advertisers cited brand safety and suitability as growing concerns, and 71% indicated that insufficient transparency from social media platforms would negatively affect their spending decisions.

The AA/WARC report will be published again next year. The number will be slightly different. The £31 billion left for the rest of the industry might be slightly smaller. And the methodology may quietly change again. According to Oakes, the more important question is not why the industry produces flattering headlines - but why senior practitioners keep accepting them.

Timeline

  • December 2025 - Omar Oakes co-authors the WARC Global Ad Trends Report: Media's New Normal, documenting the two-speed structure of UK and global advertising markets
  • December 2025 - WPP Media publishes its This Year Next Year Global End-of-Year forecast, projecting $1.14 trillion in 2025 global advertising revenue; PPC Land reports
  • January 2026 - IAS research finds 82% of UK advertisers cite brand safety as a growing concern; PPC Land reports
  • Q1 2026 - Alphabet reports 22% year-on-year revenue growth to $109.9 billion; Meta reports 33% growth to $56.3 billion; Amazon advertising grows 24% to $17.2 billion
  • May 2, 2026 - PPC Land publishes analysis of Big Tech Q1 2026 earnings, noting SMBs outside agency chains as the primary growth driver
  • May 5, 2026 - The AA/WARC Expenditure Report confirms UK adspend grew 6.4% to £46.7 billion in 2025
  • May 5, 2026 - Omar Oakes publishes "Advertising has reached peak self-delusion" in Ad-verse Reactions, arguing the 6.4% figure masks structural concentration
  • May 5, 2026 - Justin Lebbon shares Oakes's analysis on LinkedIn, amplifying the data points to the marketing community

Summary

Who: Omar Oakes, journalist and founding editor-in-chief of The Media Leader, writing in his Substack newsletter Ad-verse Reactions; Justin Lebbon, founder and board advisor, amplifying the analysis on LinkedIn; the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) and the Advertising Association/WARC, publishers of the UK Expenditure Report; and Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon as the primary beneficiaries of UK ad market growth.

What: The AA/WARC Expenditure Report confirmed UK advertising spend grew 6.4% to £46.7 billion in 2025. Oakes's analysis argues the headline figure conceals a deeper structural shift: two of every three pounds spent on UK advertising now flows to Google, Meta, and Amazon. UK spend on low-attention media has risen from 32% to 70% of total investment since 2015. Only 25% of campaigns achieve their effectiveness potential despite 80% achieving their reach potential. The methodology of the AA/WARC report was also quietly changed to account for streaming revenue.

When: The AA/WARC Expenditure Report was published on May 5, 2026. Oakes's newsletter analysis and Lebbon's LinkedIn post were also published on May 5, 2026. The underlying data covers 2025 annual advertising spend and Q1 2026 Big Tech earnings.

Where: The United Kingdom advertising market, with parallel dynamics documented across the United States, where the same three companies control approximately 72% of digital advertising spend, and across Europe, where retail media and the largest platforms absorb the majority of incremental spend.

Why: The analysis matters for the marketing community because the industry's primary benchmark report may be measuring a growth figure that does not reflect the experience of most participants - agencies, publishers, and advertisers outside the largest platform ecosystems. The concentration of incremental spend in low-attention environments, combined with measurement frameworks designed by platforms with a stake in the conclusions, creates conditions where market health and market growth diverge. Understanding that divergence is necessary for any realistic assessment of where media budgets are working and where they are not.

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