A country fighting a war produced one of the most detailed digital advertising market reports in Eastern Europe this month - and the numbers inside are more resilient than most analysts would have predicted.

IAB Ukraine on June 18, 2026, published its Digital Media Market Overview 2026, a 110-slide report compiling data on the Ukrainian internet, e-commerce, advertising, and performance marketing landscape. The document is the product of four agencies working in parallel: Publicis Groupe Ukraine, iProspect Ukraine (Dentsu Ukraine), RAZOM Group, and OMD Optimum Media Ukraine.

The headline figures are striking. According to IAB Ukraine, the digital advertising market grew 22% in 2025, reaching 54.84 billion hryvnias. The organization forecasts a further 18% expansion in 2026, lifting the total to approximately 64.51 billion hryvnias. That trajectory places Ukraine among a small group of European markets sustaining double-digit digital advertising growth despite persistent macroeconomic disruption.

The overall advertising market and its structure

Total advertising investment across all channels in Ukraine reached 34.58 billion hryvnias in 2025, an increase of 19% on 2024, according to industry association Vseukrainska Reklamna Koalitsiia (VRK). The forecast for 2026 calls for 39.51 billion hryvnias, representing 14% growth. Internet media is the single largest channel. Its share of total advertising investment has climbed from 23% in 2018 to 62% in 2025 and is projected to hold at 63% in 2026, according to the VRK and IAB data in the report.

Television, once the dominant channel, now sits at 14% of total spend in the 2026 forecast, down from 43% in 2018. OTT - streaming platforms with advertising inventory - holds 1% of the 2026 budget allocation. DOOH (digital out-of-home) and radio each contribute small shares. The structural shift toward digital is complete in the sense that it is no longer directional but consolidated.

Breaking the digital market into its components reveals where growth is concentrated. Paid search remains the largest single digital segment by spend, at 47% of the digital total in the 2025 budget split. Internet media (display, video, and other online formats) holds 39%, while other digital including development accounts for the remaining 14%, according to IAB Ukraine data.

The growth rates by format tell a more interesting story. According to the report, digital video grew 51% in 2025, making it the fastest-growing major digital category for that year. CTV (connected television advertising) posted 115% growth in 2025 - albeit from a small base. Paid search grew 25%. Digital banner expanded 7%, while SEO spend contracted 9% and audio fell 11%. SMM grew 14%, and influencer marketing matched the digital video rate with 18% growth.

For 2026, the projections moderate. Digital video is forecast to grow 21%, paid search 20%, digital banner 11%, and CTV 18%. The deceleration is expected; the question is whether the pace holds amid ongoing energy infrastructure disruptions that affect media buying behavior.

Internet penetration and usage patterns

Monthly internet penetration in Ukraine reached 92% among online users aged 16 to 64 in cities of 10,000 residents or more, according to the PACE panel operated by Publicis Groupe Ukraine in June 2025. Of those users, 81% access the internet for more than three hours per day. The average daily online session runs to four hours and 26 minutes.

That level of consumption is striking for a market where power outages remain a persistent feature of daily life. The penetration figure has climbed steadily: it was 85% in September 2021, 85% in September 2022, 91% in October 2023, 90% in October 2024, and 92% by October 2025. Internet use has grown through the war rather than contracting.

The mobile channel dominates delivery. According to IAB Ukraine data, 79% of digital banner spend in 2025 was placed on mobile inventory, alongside 81% of digital video spend. On Facebook specifically, mobile's share is considerably higher: 94% of digital banner and 93% of digital video budgets on the platform went to mobile placements in 2025. YouTube's mobile delivery share stood at 57% for video placements in 2025, down one percentage point from 2024, partly because a growing proportion of YouTube consumption is occurring on connected television screens rather than smartphones.

Video: YouTube dominates, OTT splits by age

Among all video platforms, YouTube leads by a wide margin. According to the PACE panel data cited in the report, 90% of surveyed online users watch YouTube weekly, and the figure rises to 96% for annual reach. Online TV (OTT content from Ukrainian broadcasters) reached 43% of users on a weekly basis, which the report notes is now on a par with linear television, itself at 49% weekly reach. TikTok achieved 51% weekly reach in the June 2025 survey.

The generational split is pronounced. YouTube maintains near-universal reach across every age cohort from 16 to 64. TikTok shows strong performance among users aged 16 to 34, peaking among the 16-24 cohort. Linear television usage declines steeply from the 35-44 group onward. Online TV consumption, by contrast, rises sharply from the 35-44 cohort and peaks around 45-54 before declining - a pattern consistent with cord-shifting rather than cord-cutting among older audiences.

Among OTT platforms, the report identifies Kyivstar TV and Megogo as the leading services by knowledge and consumption among weekly OTT users. Kyivstar TV has 70% awareness, 54% consumption rate, and 41% weekly usage in the sample. Megogo follows at 67% awareness and 48% consumption. Netflix occupies third place by awareness at 54%, with 28% consumption - a considerably lower conversion from awareness to active use than the domestic platforms achieve, partly reflecting pricing sensitivity and partly the Ukrainian-language content advantage local services hold.

Ad blocking creates a meaningful constraint on addressable YouTube inventory. According to the PACE data, 32% of surveyed users employ ad blockers, 14% use YouTube Premium, and 5% do both. That leaves 56% of YouTube users reachable via standard advertising on the platform - and 9% who use both an ad blocker and have a Premium subscription, a somewhat redundant combination that the data nonetheless captures. Of the 32% who use ad blockers without Premium, age distribution is broadly flat across cohorts, ranging from 25% to 27% for users aged 25 to 64, with the 16-24 group slightly higher at 27%.

The implication for media planners is that 64% of YouTube Premium subscribers are reachable through alternative digital formats. The report frames this as an inventory diversification argument: Premium subscribers are not entirely lost to advertisers.

E-commerce: growing but lagging global benchmarks

Ukraine's e-commerce sector is expanding at a pace the report describes as outrunning global averages, but the absolute market share reveals structural headroom. According to Euromonitor data cited in the document, e-commerce represented 10% of total Ukrainian retail in 2025. The global figure, by comparison, was 24% of retail trade in the same year. The UK and US, two of the most advanced e-commerce markets, each run at 30% online retail penetration.

Ukraine's total retail market stood at approximately 65 billion US dollars in 2025, according to the report's sourcing. E-commerce's 10% share translates to roughly 6.5 billion US dollars in online transactions. That puts the country well below peers in Western Europe even after accounting for the war's effect on physical retail infrastructure.

Consumer behavior data shows a market in tension between price sensitivity and digital adoption. According to Deloitte and KANTAR MMI surveys cited in the report, 45% of Ukrainian consumers report increased use of AI tools in their shopping activity in 2025, with particularly strong adoption among the 18-27 age cohort, where the figure reaches 77%. At the same time, 42% of consumers report reduced use of taxi services, and 33% have cut back on purchases from American and European websites - a direct consequence of disposable income pressure.

The most active e-commerce platforms by monthly marketplace app usage are Rozetka (37.6% of surveyed consumers using the app at least once per month), Prom (31.0%), AliExpress (29.9%), and Joom (15.9%). Chinese platforms are gaining ground: 29% of consumers report purchasing on Chinese sites, a figure that has grown compared to prior years as consumers seek lower-cost alternatives. That compares to 28% who say they have decreased purchases from Chinese sites - an almost evenly split sentiment around the channel.

The advertising market's resilience under blackout conditions

One section of the report addresses a topic with no direct parallel in Western European market research: the impact of electrical grid blackouts on advertising inventory delivery. According to IAB Ukraine data, sellers of television and digital out-of-home advertising have developed protocols specifically to manage inventory loss during power outages.

For television, the documented approach involves expanding ad breaks from 9 minutes to 10 minutes per hour, maximizing available inventory across all channels in the same sales house, and continuous monitoring of delivery metrics. For DOOH, providers equipped screens with backup power supplies sized to handle energy deficits, while in January 2026 DOOH suppliers in Kyiv received instructions restricting operation during evening hours due to grid load management requirements. Suppliers compensate advertisers for undelivered rotations by extending campaign durations.

The blackout problem also shows up in marketing planning data. According to a Factum Group survey conducted for VRK between September and November 2025, 2025 was described as a year of marketing stabilization. After substantial expansion in 2023, growth shifted to a more moderate pace. The survey found 69% of businesses reported increasing their marketing activity in 2025. A larger-than-two-thirds majority plan strategies for a year or more - the planning horizon has extended despite uncertainty, a shift the report attributes partly to businesses developing resilience frameworks that can accommodate infrastructure disruption.

AI adoption: near-universal but mostly operational

Among the report's more direct data points on AI in marketing is a finding that 87% of surveyed Ukrainian companies had integrated AI tools into marketing processes by 2025. The figure comes from a Factum Group survey commissioned by VRK. Of those using AI, 57% reported an increase in marketing effectiveness: 35% noted a noticeable improvement and 22% a significant one. Only 5% said AI had not affected their effectiveness.

The report frames AI as operating across three dimensions: consumer contact (companies are maintaining online channel focus while increasing contact frequency), team and consumer emotional state (communications need to remain measured and contextually appropriate given wartime social conditions), and AI specifically as a driver of personalization, media planning, and strategic development.

Retail media as strategic infrastructure

Retail media networks appear in the IAB Ukraine report under the performance trends section and are positioned as having moved from an emerging category to a standard strategic tool. The practical examples in the document center on first-party data (FPDP) campaigns run against CRM databases from companies including Uklon, Helsi (a medical appointment platform), and Kyivstar.

The data marketing model described involves collecting buyer phone numbers in CRM systems, analyzing lifetime value (LTV) by buyer cohort, then activating campaigns against those cohorts to drive repeat purchases. This is a relatively standard retail media data architecture by Western European benchmarks, but the specific platforms named - Uklon for mobility data, Helsi for healthcare transaction data - illustrate how Ukraine's data economy has developed distinctive first-party data sources.

The report also covers TikTok Smart+ as a performance channel, describing its use in traffic and video views campaigns with KPIs set against CPC and CPV metrics. This positions TikTok alongside Meta and Google as a third-party performance platform in the Ukrainian market, consistent with the broader pattern of TikTok's expansion into direct-response advertising that PPC Land has tracked across European markets.

Performance marketing: shifting from ROAS to margin

The performance marketing section contains a framework comparison between traditional performance optimization and what the report calls performance plus category economics. The distinction is between optimizing for conversions and ROAS - the conventional approach - and optimizing for margin and profit at the product category level.

Traditional performance, as the document defines it, treats all SKUs equally, uses full catalog feeds, and positions marketing as a sales generation function. The alternative approach involves ABC prioritization of products by profitability, feeds structured by margin tiers, and marketing positioned as a driver of business efficiency rather than pure volume.

This framing is consistent with how retail advertising strategy has evolved in more mature markets. European retail media spending reached 13.7 billion euros in 2024 with 21.1% growth, partly because brands in those markets made exactly this transition from campaign-level ROAS measurement to portfolio-level margin analysis.

The report includes a media inflation chart for 2026 covering all major channel categories. Among traditional formats, linear television direct placements show 13% price inflation in 2026, down from higher levels in prior years. Sponsorship formats show 16% inflation. Among OOH formats, billboard (3x6) placements are inflating at 33%, city-light formats at 29%, and DOOH at 30%.

Digital channel pricing is moderating relative to out-of-home. YouTube video shows 16% inflation in 2026, approximately in line with Meta (16%), Video In-Stream (15%), and CTV (13%). Display formats excluding in-app are at 14%. The most aggressive pricing pressure is therefore in physical outdoor formats rather than digital, which the report attributes to constrained inventory supply in outdoor media.

This pattern inverts what some Western European markets have experienced, where digital CPM inflation has outpaced traditional media. The difference in Ukraine likely reflects the particular supply dynamics of outdoor advertising in a market where installation and maintenance of physical infrastructure faces real constraints.

Context for the marketing community

For advertising practitioners outside Ukraine, the report matters for several reasons. First, it provides granular market data for a country that rarely appears in international ad spend forecasts with sufficient detail. IAB Europe's 2024 AdEx Benchmark Report noted Ukraine led European markets in constant currency digital advertising growth at 27.2% in 2024, placing it ahead of Serbia and Poland in the growth ranking. The IAB Ukraine document provides the national-level breakdown behind that figure.

Second, the specific dynamics of the Ukrainian market - mobile-first consumption at 79-81% of digital spend, CTV growing at 115% in 2025, retail media consolidating around first-party data from domestic platforms - represent a version of the transitions occurring in Western European markets, but compressed into a shorter timeframe and complicated by wartime constraints. Poland's parallel 2025 IAB report, published the same week as the Ukrainian edition on June 18, 2026, showed digital advertising reaching nearly 11 billion PLN with 15% growth, making a two-market read of the two documents particularly useful for regional advertisers.

Third, the AI adoption data is unusually specific. Eighty-seven percent company-level integration in a market facing the logistical pressures of an active conflict is a figure that challenges assumptions about the relationship between stability and technology adoption. Marketers in more stable markets who are still debating whether AI belongs in their workflows are looking at a market that has largely resolved that question under considerably more difficult conditions.

IAB Europe's AI whitepaper from July 2025 found that 85% of European companies already deploy AI-based tools for marketing purposes, a figure that aligns closely with the Ukrainian data and suggests the country's adoption rate is in line with the broader European trend rather than an outlier.

The report's coverage of the media inflation environment is also relevant for international buyers considering Ukraine as part of regional campaigns. CTV at 13% inflation and digital video at 16-17% remain below DOOH formats running at 29-33%, which affects how media planners should think about channel mix when budgets are constrained.

Timeline

  • 2018: Ukrainian digital advertising market at 11.79 billion hryvnias, representing 23% of total advertising spend
  • 2019: Digital advertising reaches 16.06 billion hryvnias with 36% growth
  • 2020: Digital grows to 20.25 billion hryvnias (26% growth); total ad market contracts 1%
  • 2021: Digital advertising surges 48% to 29.87 billion hryvnias; total ad market up 35%
  • 2022: Total advertising market contracts 65% to 11.17 billion hryvnias as full-scale war begins; digital falls 36% to 19.17 billion hryvnias
  • 2023: Digital advertising recovers 66% to 31.81 billion hryvnias; total market up 96%
  • 2024: Digital advertising grows 41% to 44.99 billion hryvnias; total market up 32%
  • 2025: Digital advertising grows 22% to 54.84 billion hryvnias; total market up 19% to 34.58 billion hryvnias; CTV grows 115%; digital video grows 51%
  • May 21, 2025: IAB Europe releases its 2024 AdEx Benchmark Report at the Interact conference in Brussels; Ukraine leads European markets in constant currency digital growth at 27.2% for 2024
  • June 17, 2026: IAB Ukraine Digital Media Market Overview 2026 report file created
  • June 18, 2026: IAB Ukraine publishes the Digital Media Market Overview 2026, compiled by Publicis Groupe Ukraine, iProspect Ukraine, RAZOM Group, and OMD Optimum Media Ukraine; IAB Polska publishes its parallel Strategic Report Internet 2025/2026 on the same date
  • 2026 forecast: Digital advertising projected to grow 18% to 64.51 billion hryvnias; paid search projected to grow 20%; digital video 21%; CTV 18%

Summary

Who: IAB Ukraine, with research compiled by Publicis Groupe Ukraine, iProspect Ukraine (Dentsu Ukraine), RAZOM Group, and OMD Optimum Media Ukraine.

What: The Digital Media Market Overview 2026 - a 110-slide report covering the Ukrainian internet, e-commerce, advertising market, video consumption, social media, and performance marketing landscape, with data for 2025 and forecasts for 2026.

When: Published June 18, 2026, based on survey and panel data collected primarily in late 2025 and early 2026.

Where: Ukraine, covering urban markets of 10,000 residents or more for consumer panel data, with national-level advertising spend data from VRK and IAB Ukraine sources.

Why: To provide the advertising and marketing industry with verified data on market performance and directional forecasts at a moment when Ukraine's digital economy is demonstrating growth that outpaces predictions, despite the ongoing disruption of war - giving both domestic practitioners and international advertisers a data-grounded basis for planning decisions.