The US programmatic market entered 2026 with a sharp post-holiday CPM reset, though strong annual growth and rising secure signal adoption point to a maturing ecosystem with shifting identity dynamics.
The US programmatic advertising market published its February 2026 performance data, covering January 2026 results, and the numbers tell a familiar seasonal story with an increasingly unfamiliar twist. CPMs fell sharply from December's holiday-inflated highs, yet the market simultaneously posted its strongest year-over-year gains in recent memory - a split picture that reveals something more structural than cyclical at work.
According to the DataBeat Programmatic Trends Report published on February 26, 2026, overall CPMs fell 32.5% month-over-month in January, with display CPMs contracting 36.6% and video CPMs dropping 27.4%. Against those same months in the prior year, however, the market looks entirely different. Display CPMs climbed 21.4% year-over-year, video CPMs surged 33.9%, and the blended overall CPM was up 23.6% compared to January 2025.
The report draws on anonymized data from industry partners across the DataBeat network, tracking more than $55 million in monthly revenue, 35 billion monthly impressions, and signals from over 200 tracked bidders. Those numbers give the dataset a breadth that makes the trends meaningful rather than anecdotal.
Post-holiday CPM pullbacks are a defining feature of January programmatic markets. Retail and brand advertisers typically reduce budgets significantly after fourth-quarter peaks, and January 2026 was no exception. The Trade Desk, ranked third among top AdX bidders, posted a 28% month-over-month CPM decline. Google Ads, still the top buyer on AdX, fell 43%. DV360 dropped 36%. According to the DataBeat report, "Google Ads remained the top buyer this month, but CPMs fell sharply by 43% MoM, with DV360 also down 36%, reflecting weaker overall demand."
Among major advertisers on AdX, Best Buy recorded a 52% month-over-month CPM decline, and AT&T fell 57% - both figures the report attributes to reduced brand spending after the holiday season. Marriott International, the highest-CPM advertiser on the list at $8.91, still posted a 22% monthly drop. The outlier was Comcast, the only top-ten advertiser to register growth: CPMs up 14% month-over-month at $2.37, a notable divergence from the otherwise uniform downward direction.
TemuDSP posted the steepest decline of any tracked bidder: 75% month-over-month, with a CPM of $6.87. Media.net fell 60%. These are significant contractions, though the context matters - both platforms entered January from positions of elevated holiday-period activity.
The device-level data adds granularity to the headline figures. Mobile CPMs averaged $1.02 in January, down 33.3% month-over-month but up 12.1% year-over-year. Desktop came in at $1.09, falling 32.3% from December and rising 25.3% annually. Tablet CPMs reached $0.85, a 19.8% monthly decline paired with a 16.4% annual gain.
Connected TV stands out. CTV CPMs averaged $4.82 - well above all other device categories - with a comparatively modest 13.6% monthly decline and a strong 29.2% year-over-year increase. Ad Exchange dominated CTV share at 48% of supply, posting a $7.87 CPM despite a 61% monthly fall. Telaria held 15% share at $6.43, up 2% month-over-month. Index Exchange claimed 12% share at $3.78, up 55% year-over-year.
The relative resilience of CTV pricing, even in a down month, reflects the growing advertiser appetite for premium video inventory. As PPC Land has reported, programmatic CTV inventory has been expanding steadily through new formats and biddable linear television, and standardization efforts have been gaining momentum across the industry.
Among display SSPs, Ad Exchange led with a 33% share of voice at a $1.02 CPM, down 42% month-over-month but up 4% annually. Index Exchange ranked second at 9% share, with a $1.40 CPM and 30% year-over-year growth. PubMatic held 5% share at $1.53, posting a comparatively modest 15% monthly decline and a 26% annual increase. TTD, at 5% share, commanded the highest CPM in the display group at $2.34, with a 13% monthly drop but a 10.7% annual gain.
On the video side, InMobi was the outlier: with a 3% share at $3.64, it posted 249% year-over-year growth - an exceptional figure that reflects its relatively low prior-year baseline rather than an industry-wide dynamic. Amazon held 16% of video share at $3.39, down 45% month-over-month but up 52% annually.
In the VRTCAL, Nativo, and Media.net category, the report notes these three were exceptions to the general year-over-year improvement pattern in display - all posted annual CPM declines.
The programmatic integration breakdown shows Prebid with a commanding 51% market share, trailed by Ad Exchange at 26%, TAM at 15%, and EBDA at 9%. While all integrations saw month-over-month CPM declines, EBDA was the only one to post an annual CPM decline as well. Prebid delivered a CPM of $1.21, down 34.2% monthly but up 8% year-over-year. Ad Exchange integration posted $1.08 CPM with a 50% annual gain - the strongest year-over-year growth across all four integration types.
Among Prebid top SSPs, TTD ranked second at 13% share with a $2.35 CPM and 10.8% annual increase. Index Exchange led Prebid share at 18%, posting $1.47 CPM and 25% annual growth. Dianomi was a notable outlier: up 27% month-over-month in the Prebid context, the only partner in that group to post a positive monthly movement.
One of the more technically substantive sections of the DataBeat report examines how secure signals are altering programmatic auction dynamics - and the findings carry significant implications for publishers and buyers navigating the post-cookie transition.
According to the report, on Chrome, "CPM increases by 27%, showing that bidders are more confident about the value of the inventory and are willing to pay more when they understand who they are reaching." Fill rates in Chrome environments rose from 12.7% to 76.7% when secure signals were present, versus absent, for the winning bidder.
The picture differs sharply in non-Chrome environments. There, "fill rates increase from 11.28% to 65.22%" when secure signals are delivered, but CPMs rise by only 1%. The report explains this divergence: non-Chrome environments carry vast inventory availability, which limits pricing pressure even as bidder participation grows. Secure signals in those environments help bidders assess and fill inventory more reliably, but "the information is not sufficient to support higher CPMs in the absence of cookies."
The practical conclusion the report draws is forward-looking: "As secure signals mature and accumulate more data over time, they are expected to improve bidder confidence and spending in non-Chrome environments, creating potential for future CPM growth."
Which identity solutions deliver the most pricing premium when secure signals reach the winning bidder? The DataBeat data is unusually granular here. According to the report, Unified ID 2.0 showed the highest CPM uplift at 94%, followed by Unified ID 1.0 at 85%. LiveIntent came in at 74%. OpenX and BidSwitch posted 43% and 42% respectively, while Lotame Panorama ID reached 38% and LiveRamp ATS 29%. LiveIntent for PubMatic showed the smallest gain at 18%.
The report characterizes UID 2.0 and UID 1.0 as performing at this level because "these IDs are built on consented first-party data and are easy for buyers to use, which leads to higher bids when they are delivered to the winner." LiveIntent and LiveRamp ATS benefit from "buyer preference for authenticated and email-based signals." BidSwitch and OpenX, by contrast, show moderate gains because their role is primarily in "passing identity signals across the supply path rather than creating identity themselves."
This ranking has operational significance. Publishers who have invested in adopting Unified ID 2.0 infrastructure can now point to a 94% CPM uplift figure as a concrete argument for that investment. The long-running discussion about UID 2.0 adoption across CTV and streaming has generally lacked this level of auction-level empirical specificity.
As PPC Land has covered, the broader debate about identity, supply path, and signal trustworthiness has been intensifying across the industry. The secure signals data from DataBeat gives that debate a firmer quantitative grounding.
February 2026 saw the US programmatic supply ecosystem add approximately 106,000 net ads.txt lines, according to the MediaMint DataBeat newsletter published on February 26. The growth was driven by mid-traffic publishers expanding their authorized seller relationships and increased reseller activity. Sharethrough, Index Exchange, and PubMatic were identified as leading that expansion.
The gains are visible in the seller classifications. In the "established" tier, Yahoo gained 1,753 lines, TrustedStack added 846, Zeta gained 715, Smart Ad Server added 706, and Blockthrough gained 653. In the "scaling" category, ConnectAD added 6,589 lines - by far the largest single gain. RichAudience added 332, Primis 312, and Axonix 299. Freestar led the emerging tier.
The long history of ads.txt as a supply chain transparency mechanism puts these gains in perspective. Each authorized seller line represents a publisher formally acknowledging a trading relationship - a mechanism that has reduced unauthorized inventory since the IAB launched the standard. As PPC Land has noted in its reporting on supply path optimization automation, these authorized supply signals increasingly feed into buyer-side filtering decisions.
Beyond the performance data, the MediaMint DataBeat newsletter frames February as "a pivot towards accountable growth," pointing to a broader industry movement from AI experimentation toward operational deployment. Rajeev Butani, CEO and Chairman of MediaMint, and Nitish Mittal, Partner-Technology at Everest Group, discussed this shift in a MasterMinds session referenced in the newsletter.
According to the newsletter, most AI pilots fail to reach production because of what the session terms the "PTSD" gap - shorthand for Process, Technology, Skills, and Data deficiencies. The session argues that moving from experimental pilots to "governed, scalable execution" requires embedding intelligence directly into existing workflows with "clear ownership." MediaMint's Mia platform is described as moving "beyond pilots to persona-based agents that deliver measurable outcomes with built-in accountability."
MediaMint also won Bronze for Digital Enablement Provider of the Year at the 20th annual Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service, evaluated against more than 2,100 global nominations. The company was also featured in Everest Group's Agentic AI research during the same period.
This framing - agentic AI as accountable infrastructure rather than a pilot project - intersects with a broader adtech conversation. Industry debates on agentic protocols have raised concerns about transparency and governance, which Butani's PTSD framework directly addresses by placing process accountability at the centre of deployment criteria.
The February 2026 DataBeat data provides the clearest snapshot yet of where US programmatic performance sits at the start of the year. The 23.6% year-over-year overall CPM growth signals genuine market strength beneath the seasonal noise. But the secure signals and identity solution data may be the most immediately actionable part of the report for publishers and buyers alike.
Publishers evaluating whether to integrate Unified ID 2.0 or prioritize secure signal delivery have, for the first time, auction-level evidence showing a potential 94% CPM differential. Buyers considering which identity frameworks to activate can weigh those same numbers. And the Chrome versus non-Chrome divergence underscores that the market is not uniform - browser environment, supply scale, and signal depth all interact in ways that require differentiated strategies.
January is typically the softest month of the programmatic calendar. The question for the months ahead is how much of the year-over-year momentum holds as Q2 budget cycles begin and the market tests whether 2026's opening trajectory can be sustained.
Who: MediaMint's DataBeat, a programmatic market intelligence unit, published the February 2026 US Programmatic Trends Report. The data covers supply-side and demand-side performance across more than 200 tracked bidders, SSPs, and advertisers including Google Ads, DV360, The Trade Desk, Amazon, and major brand advertisers.
What: US programmatic CPMs fell 32.5% month-over-month in January 2026, with display down 36.6% and video down 27.4%, following holiday-period peaks. Year-over-year, overall CPMs grew 23.6%, display rose 21.4%, and video climbed 33.9%. Secure signal data showed a 27% CPM uplift on Chrome when signals were delivered to winning bidders, versus 1% uplift in non-Chrome environments. Unified ID 2.0 generated the highest CPM increase - 94% - among tracked identity solutions. The US programmatic supply ecosystem gained approximately 106,000 net ads.txt lines in February.
When: The report was published on February 26, 2026, and covers January 2026 performance benchmarked against December 2025 (month-over-month) and January 2025 (year-over-year).
Where: The data covers the US programmatic advertising market, examining performance across display and video formats, device categories including mobile, desktop, tablet, and CTV, and programmatic integrations including Prebid, Ad Exchange, TAM, and EBDA.
Why: The report matters because it provides publishers and buyers with quantified evidence of how secure signals and identity solutions affect auction outcomes, at a time when the industry is actively navigating the transition away from third-party cookies. The 94% CPM differential for Unified ID 2.0 and the Chrome versus non-Chrome divergence in fill rates offer concrete data points for operational decision-making. The year-over-year growth figures also establish that programmatic market fundamentals remain strong despite seasonal pricing pressure.
