The US programmatic advertising market posted a 33.9% year-over-year overall CPM gain in April 2026, according to DataBeat's May 2026 Programmatic Trends Report published on May 22, 2026. Month-over-month, overall CPMs climbed 25.9%, driven by a 2.6% rise in display CPMs and an 8.3% rebound in video CPMs. The figures, drawn from anonymized data across the DataBeat network, cover more than $55 million in tracked monthly revenue, more than 35 billion monthly impressions, and signals from over 200 tracked bidders.

The headline numbers carry context worth unpacking. Display and video are moving in different directions from connected television, which recorded a 6.8% month-over-month CPM decline and a sharper 25.8% year-over-year drop. That divergence - strong gains in browser-based formats, sustained pressure in streaming inventory - reflects structural forces playing out simultaneously on the supply and demand sides of the market.

CPM recovery across display and video

Display CPMs rose 2.6% month-over-month and surged 24.2% year-over-year, according to DataBeat. The report notes that display inventory is increasingly absorbing demand that previously flowed into video, as advertisers prioritize cost-efficient formats amid tighter Q2 budgets. Year-over-year CPM performance was split roughly evenly across partners, pointing to a market in transition. Established players such as Ad Exchange and Rubicon are consolidating demand share, while legacy mid-tier partners continue to face structural pricing erosion.

Within the display SSP rankings, Ad Exchange holds 52% share of voice at a CPM of $1.20, up 5.3% month-over-month and 71.4% year-over-year. OpenX follows at 17% share of voice with a CPM of $1.09, though it recorded a 26.4% month-over-month decline. Amazon sits at 8% share with a $1.56 CPM, up 41.8% year-over-year. At the other end, VRTCAL and The Trade Desk each hold 6% share but recorded month-over-month CPM declines of 66.3% and 57.1% respectively.

Video CPMs rebounded 8.3% month-over-month and returned to positive year-over-year territory at 2.1%, recovering from what DataBeat describes as a prolonged stretch of year-over-year declines. The report frames this as suggesting advertisers are cautiously reactivating video budgets, likely driven by stronger audience engagement signals heading into the summer content cycle. Month-over-month momentum was broad-based across video partners, though Rubicon, LoopMe, and Nativo recorded year-over-year declines, pointing to continued CPM pressure on partners with heavier exposure to open-auction video inventory versus programmatic-guaranteed or private marketplace channels.

The top video SSPs by share of voice are Ad Exchange at 43% with a $3.18 CPM - up 50.7% month-over-month and 58.2% year-over-year - followed by Amazon at 32% with a $2.70 CPM, up 4.2% month-over-month and 24.4% year-over-year.

CTV under sustained pressure

CTV tells a different story. CPMs declined 6.8% month-over-month and 25.8% year-over-year, averaging $4.68, continuing what DataBeat characterizes as a multi-month contraction. The sustained pressure reflects an oversupply dynamic in streaming inventory: new entrants are expanding CTV supply faster than advertiser demand can absorb it, compounded by audience fragmentation that makes audience targeting and reach guarantees increasingly difficult to fulfill at premium pricing.

Within the CTV SSP rankings, Ad Exchange leads with 74% share of voice at $5.29 CPM, up 20.2% month-over-month but down 3.1% year-over-year. OpenX follows at 15% share with a $5.97 CPM, up 1.2% month-over-month and 12.4% year-over-year. OneTag holds 4% share at $4.19, up 33.0% year-over-year. The year-over-year picture for CTV broadly is one of compression at scale.

This matters for how media buyers model 2026 upfront commitments. PPC Land has documented the CTV supply expansion trajectory in detail, noting that CTV budgets increased three percentage points year-over-year to 26% of media spend on average, and more than half of respondents in a January 2026 survey expected more than 60% of CTV buys to be transacted programmatically. The volume of money moving into CTV is not receding. But the pricing is.

Device breakdown: mobile gains, desktop steady

Mobile CPMs surged 30.9% month-over-month and 51.6% year-over-year to reach $1.44, according to DataBeat. Desktop advanced 20.8% month-over-month and 28.3% year-over-year to $1.45. Tablet CPMs rose 27.3% month-over-month and 35.5% year-over-year to $1.26.

Mobile's outsized year-over-year gain is particularly notable given its traffic quality headwinds. DataBeat notes that advertisers are bidding more aggressively on mobile inventory despite lower average user intent, likely driven by scale-dependent performance campaigns ramping into Q2. Within the mobile SSP table, Ad Exchange leads at 45% share of voice with a $1.37 CPM, up 20.2% month-over-month and 59.3% year-over-year. The Trade Desk holds 10% share at $1.54, up 8.5% month-over-month and 62.1% year-over-year. GumGum recorded an 8.9% month-over-month CPM gain and a 55.0% year-over-year rise.

Ad Exchange gains ground, Prebid contracts

The programmatic integration picture shows a clear structural shift. Prebid leads at 48% share - down from 56% - while Ad Exchange expanded from 27% to 35%, according to DataBeat. The report frames this as a meaningful demand rotation toward Google's exchange, as buyers consolidate toward higher-quality, brand-safe supply paths.

Year-over-year integration trends diverged sharply. Prebid recorded a 61.7% year-over-year CPM gain, which DataBeat attributes to improving floor price discipline. EBDA posted a 17.9% year-over-year decline, pointing to reduced buyer appetite for legacy exchange-bidding pathways. TAM came in near-flat at -0.5%, signaling stabilization in Amazon's demand stack following prior-period volatility.

Ad Exchange delivered the strongest year-over-year performance across all integrations at 71.8%, according to DataBeat, reinforcing its growing role as a preferred demand channel for buyers prioritizing auction transparency and access to premium publisher inventory. The month-over-month picture tells a recovery story across the board: EBDA CPMs rose 86.4%, TAM CPMs rose 53.8%, Ad Exchange CPMs rose 20.7%, and Prebid CPMs rose 6.5%.

Within Prebid's top SSPs, The Trade Desk holds 31% share of voice at $1.28 CPM. Rubicon follows at 18% share with a $2.01 CPM, up 44.6% month-over-month and 68.9% year-over-year. Index Exchange sits at 17% share with a $1.60 CPM, up 27.0% month-over-month. Pubmatic holds 12% share at $2.18, up 50.3% month-over-month. Amazon leads TAM at 80% share of voice with a $1.83 CPM, up 7.6% month-over-month and 47.6% year-over-year.

Advertiser and bidder signals

On the demand side, the report covers the top AdX advertisers and bidders for April. AdWords small businesses held the top position with CPMs rising 24% month-over-month, according to DataBeat. Amazon Corp posted a strong 55% CPM rebound, consistent with the retail media calendar accelerating into Q2 event-driven spending cycles. Nintendo's 80% CPM surge stands out as a category signal, with gaming advertisers front-loading spend ahead of major hardware launches.

At the bidder level, Google Ads and DV360 posted aligned 26% and 24% month-over-month CPM gains respectively, according to DataBeat, confirming synchronized demand recovery across Google's buy-side ecosystem. Magnite and Media.net both surged 82% month-over-month, pointing to heightened competition for curated, premium supply paths as DSPs increasingly prioritize quality over scale. The Trade Desk's 65% month-over-month rise reinforces the broader shift toward open-internet, data-driven buying strategies. The April period marked a full reversal from the prior month's universal CPM decline across top bidders.

Servicenow recorded the highest CPM of any tracked advertiser at $24.28, though down 4% month-over-month. Sony Corporation's 59% pullback and Disney's 61% decline are described by DataBeat as characteristic post-campaign normalizations following concentrated prior-month investment, rather than structural demand exits.

Supply chain: ads.txt tightens at the top

DataBeat's companion Sellers Report published on May 11, 2026 covers ads.txt dynamics through the same period. May recorded approximately 19.7k net ads.txt line additions, down sharply from April's 102k net on similar gross volume. The removal-to-addition ratio reached 95.4%, the tightest in the February-to-May window.

Resellers drove 63% of that net gain against direct's 37%. According to DataBeat, at 4.8% gross spread, the market is onboarding and pruning supply at a near-equal pace. The direct segment produced a net of just 7k lines: publishers are dropping authorized direct partners at nearly the same rate they are adding new ones. For mid-tier SSPs trying to get on publisher lists, that compression makes the window narrower even when overall activity looks busy.

Among the SSPs gaining new lines, PubMatic led at 3,584 lines, followed by Rubicon at 3,342 and OpenX at 3,217. Index Exchange added 2,771 lines and Nexxen added 2,731. The top-three SSPs - PubMatic, Rubicon, and OpenX - combined for 10k lines, which is 51.4% of the month's entire net from three players. The gap between first and second place was just 242 lines, the tightest first-vs-second spread in the series.

The publisher-tier breakdown is structurally significant. Low-traffic publishers drove approximately 16k net lines, or 82.6% of total net. Mid-traffic publishers added 4k. High-traffic publishers recorded -864 net lines, the only negative tier result for premium publishers in this data series. The top 500 publishers are trimming their ads.txt files while the long tail is still building out its infrastructure. According to DataBeat, premium publishers reducing ads.txt relationships highlights growing supply path optimization-driven supply chain consolidation, while low-traffic growth is being fueled by new creator-led publishers entering programmatic monetization.

Auction duplication remains a structural problem. DataBeat's data shows that Tier 1 SSPs have a 46% duplicated domain rate, with an average intermediary count of 1.31. Tier 2 sits at 38% duplication and Tier 3 at 34%. According to DataBeat, high duplication rates across established SSPs continue to create unnecessary auction overhead and supply chain inefficiency, with many reseller paths adding limited incremental value. The industry is increasingly shifting toward selective path consolidation to reduce operational and carbon costs without impacting revenue scale.

The traffic context: acquisition problem, not content failure

The May report's traffic landscape section covers publisher audience behavior from January through April 2026. The data presents a significant challenge for publisher monetization models: total users fell 22%, new users fell 28%, sessions fell 19%, and pageviews fell 16% across the January-to-April window, according to DataBeat. Engagement rate dropped from 57.6% to 53.5%. At the same time, pageviews per total user improved 8% and sessions per user improved 5%, while bounce rate remained stable.

DataBeat frames this in stark terms: "This is an acquisition problem, not a content or product failure. Retained users are more engaged than ever: PV/Total User +8%, Sessions/User +5%, Bounce Rate stable at 29%. The platform is losing its pipeline to new audiences - driven by structural changes in Google query handling via AI Overviews and the 2026 algorithm cluster."

Four external forces shaped the period. The February 2026 Discover update (February 5-27) was Google's first-ever Discover-only update, which caused overall sessions to fall 11% month-over-month and dropped the engagement rate to 55%. New user acquisition began contracting. The March 2026 Spam Update (March 24-25) targeted AI-generated, low-originality content, with approximately 71% of affiliate publishers impacted. It landed two days before the March Core Update, leaving no recovery window between the two events. The March Core Update (March 27 through April 8) affected content quality, E-E-A-T signals, helpfulness, and relevance, causing overall sessions to fall 10% month-over-month in April and dropping engagement rate to 53%. AI Overviews expansion - flagged by DataBeat as ongoing and structural since 2025-2026 - is described as non-reversible: zero-click SERP answers are eroding click-through rates on informational queries, with impressions stable but clicks declining.

PPC Land has tracked this publisher traffic erosion in detail, noting that small publishers have lost 60% of their search traffic over two years as AI reshapes the web, and that chatbots still account for less than 1% of all publisher page view referrals - meaning AI-driven traffic has not replaced what search has taken away.

The channel breakdown reveals a pronounced divergence. Organic Search fell 27.5% from January to April and engagement rate is rising only because AI Overviews filter low-intent traffic - absolute engaged sessions are still falling. Direct fell 26.6%. Organic Social fell 16.0%. Email had the smallest volume decline at 9% and the highest pageviews-per-user of any channel at approximately 4.6 to 5.0, with engagement rates stable at 65-68%. Referral sessions nearly doubled from January to April (+99.7%), but engagement rate collapsed from 42.0% to 19.1%. DataBeat flags this as a critical quality risk: the referral channel is now 12.7% of all sessions but delivers near-zero audience value, likely reflecting low-quality aggregator or bot traffic.

Why this matters for buyers and sellers

The May 2026 DataBeat data arrives as the market navigates a structural realignment: CPMs recovering on a year-over-year basis in display and video, CTV under price pressure from oversupply, the programmatic supply chain tightening at the publisher end, and organic traffic - which underpins ad impression volume - being squeezed by algorithm changes and AI search at the top of the funnel.

For buyers, the recovery in display and video CPMs signals returning competition for quality inventory. The concentration of demand toward Ad Exchange - now at 35% of programmatic integration share, up from 27% - means buyers on Google's ecosystem are seeing the strongest price recovery, while alternatives on legacy exchange-bidding pathways are contracting. The Trade Desk's 65% month-over-month CPM surge across AdX bidders points to broad demand reactivation beyond Google's own tools.

PPC Land has previously covered how the DataBeat dataset spans more than $55 million in monthly revenue and over 200 tracked bidders, giving the figures breadth that makes trends meaningful rather than anecdotal. The February 2026 DataBeat report - covering January data - showed overall CPMs down 32.5% month-over-month but up 23.6% year-over-year, confirming the post-holiday reset that April's data now confirms is behind the market. The Q2 trajectory now hinges on whether mobile's aggressive bidding patterns sustain, whether video's 2.1% year-over-year return to positive territory holds, and whether CTV's supply-demand imbalance corrects before upfront commitments are finalized.

For publishers, the picture is more complicated. CPM gains are meaningful, but they layer on top of a traffic base that is shrinking structurally. The ads.txt data shows premium publishers trimming supply relationships rather than expanding them - a consolidation signal that mid-tier SSPs will feel acutely. The referral traffic surge without engagement is an immediate red flag for any publisher relying on aggregator-driven discovery.

Timeline

  • February 5-27, 2026 - Google's first-ever Discover-only update causes sessions to fall 11% month-over-month; engagement rate drops to 55%; new user acquisition begins contracting across the DataBeat publisher network
  • February 26, 2026 - DataBeat publishes its US Programmatic Trends Report for February 2026 (covering January data), showing overall CPMs down 32.5% month-over-month but up 23.6% year-over-year and approximately 106,000 net ads.txt line gains
  • March 24-25, 2026 - Google's Spam Update targets AI-generated, low-originality content; approximately 71% of affiliate publishers impacted; update lands two days before the Core Update with no recovery window between events
  • March 27 - April 8, 2026 - Google's March Core Update affects content quality, E-E-A-T, helpfulness, and relevance; overall sessions fall 10% month-over-month; engagement rate drops to 53%
  • April 24, 2026 - DataBeat publishes its US Programmatic Trends April 2026 report (covering March data)
  • April 30, 2026 - Guideline expands SQADCosts Local benchmarking tool to cover CTV, audio streaming, and podcasting, with CTV CPMs averaging $4.82 in January 2026 and year-over-year growth of 29.2% according to DataBeat data
  • May 11, 2026 - DataBeat publishes its Sellers Report for May 2026 (covering April ads.txt data), showing 19.7k net additions at a 95.4% removal-to-addition ratio
  • May 22, 2026 - DataBeat publishes the US Programmatic Trends Report for May 2026 (covering April data), showing overall CPMs up 25.9% month-over-month and 33.9% year-over-year; display CPMs up 2.6% month-over-month and 24.2% year-over-year; video CPMs up 8.3% month-over-month and 2.1% year-over-year; CTV CPMs down 6.8% month-over-month and 25.8% year-over-year

Summary

Who: DataBeat, a programmatic market intelligence unit now operating as a MediaMint company, published the US Programmatic Trends Report for May 2026 and the accompanying Sellers Report. The data covers performance across more than 200 tracked bidders, SSPs, and advertisers within the DataBeat network.

What: US programmatic overall CPMs rose 25.9% month-over-month and 33.9% year-over-year in April 2026. Display CPMs gained 2.6% month-over-month and 24.2% year-over-year. Video CPMs rebounded 8.3% month-over-month and returned to positive year-over-year territory at 2.1%. CTV CPMs fell 6.8% month-over-month and 25.8% year-over-year. Mobile CPMs surged 30.9% month-over-month and 51.6% year-over-year. Ad Exchange expanded its programmatic integration share from 27% to 35% while Prebid contracted from 56% to 48%. The companion Sellers Report recorded 19.7k net ads.txt line additions, down from April's 102k, at a 95.4% removal-to-addition ratio.

When: The US Programmatic Trends Report for May 2026 was published on May 22, 2026, covering April 2026 performance benchmarked against March 2026 and April 2025. The Sellers Report was published on May 11, 2026.

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. The ads.txt data covers the top 50,000 US publishers.

Why: The report matters because it captures a CPM recovery on a year-over-year basis while simultaneously documenting structural pressure on publisher traffic and supply chain consolidation at the premium publisher level. The convergence of rising demand-side CPMs with shrinking organic traffic pipelines and tighter ads.txt relationships defines the central tension facing programmatic publishers and buyers heading into the second half of 2026.

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