Paid Search spending among US advertisers rose from 45 million dollars a month in January 2024 to 100 million dollars by April 2026, according to a new report from Funnel, the marketing intelligence platform that says it handles roughly 11 percent of total global digital marketing spend. Social spend climbed even faster over the same period, though it still trails Search by a wide margin, and the two-year dataset covering more than 5,000 companies suggests that predictions of Search's demise at the hands of AI answer engines have, so far, not matched what advertisers are actually doing with their budgets.

Funnel published the findings on July 28, 2026, based on Search, Social, and Display advertising data drawn from over 5,000 companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region. The Stockholm-based company, whose client roster includes Uber, Adidas, Publicis Groupe, and Havas, frames the report as a two-year snapshot of how advertising budgets have moved between January 2024 and April 2026, alongside a separate year-on-year comparison of Black Friday spending in November 2024 and November 2025.

The headline finding runs against a narrative that has circulated across the advertising industry for much of the past year: that generative AI tools and answer engines would erode the value of Paid Search, prompting marketers to redirect budgets elsewhere. Funnel's data tells a more complicated story. Search remained the largest channel in every region the company studied, and in the United States specifically, monthly Search spend rose 122 percent over the period, reaching 100 million dollars in April 2026, up from 45 million dollars in January 2024.

Search still leads, even as Social narrows the gap

Funnel's report distinguishes carefully between Paid Search spending and organic search visibility, a distinction that matters given how much industry commentary has conflated the two. Whatever happens to organic click-through rates as AI Overviews and other answer engines reshape how people discover brands, the report suggests that Paid Search budgets, at least within Funnel's dataset, have not been pulled back. If anything, they have grown substantially.

In the United States, Search spend climbed from 45 million dollars per month in January 2024 to 100 million dollars by April 2026. Social spend in the same market rose from 26 million dollars to 65 million dollars over the same period, a jump the report describes as narrowing the gap between the two channels but not closing it. Display advertising, meanwhile, remained a distant third in the US market, reaching approximately 28 million dollars per month by April 2026.

The regional pattern in Europe, the Middle East and Africa tells a similar story with a different timeline. Social overtook Display in EMEA in late 2024, according to the report, and has continued closing the gap with Search ever since. Funnel's data shows Social's share of total EMEA spend growing from 18 percent in January 2024 to 33 percent by April 2026. Despite that growth, Search still led the region in April this year, accounting for approximately 78 million dollars per month against Social's 60 million dollars. The report characterizes the US market as following the same trajectory as EMEA, just a few quarters behind.

Asia-Pacific showed the steepest proportional growth of the three regions, albeit from a much smaller base. Total spend in APAC grew 400 percent from a starting point of roughly 5 million dollars per month, with Search reaching up to 9 million dollars in April 2026, a 260 percent increase. Display grew from near zero to around 5 million dollars, a 2,400 percent increase that Funnel attributes to the format's earlier near-absence in the region rather than to any structural shift matching what occurred in the US or EMEA. That growth put Display nearly level with Social, which reached 7 million dollars, itself up 600 percent over the period studied.

Platform-level shifts in EMEA and the US

Beneath the channel-level totals, Funnel's report also tracks which platforms are capturing the growth. In EMEA, TikTokentered the top five advertising platforms for the first time, according to the report, with total spend of 12 million dollars in April 2026, up from 2 million dollars in January 2024. Even with that six-fold increase, TikTok's EMEA spend remained far below Google Ads, which reached 63 million dollars in the region that month, and Facebook Ads, which reached 41 million dollars.

The US platform leaderboard looked different. TikTok had not broken into the American top five as of April 2026, based on Funnel's figures. Instead, the leading platforms that month were Google, at 82 million dollars, Facebook, at 46 million dollars, and Search Ads 360, at 15 million dollars. The absence of TikTok from the US top five, contrasted with its EMEA entry, points to a divergence in platform-level ad budget allocation between the two regions that the report does not fully explain, though it may reflect differences in how each region's advertisers have historically approached the platform for paid placements versus organic reach.

Black Friday spending accelerated sharply year-on-year

Funnel's report also examined how Black Friday spending changed between November 2024 and November 2025, a comparison it says represents the highest single month for digital ad spend across the entire two-year period analyzed. According to the final version of the report, EMEA spend rose from 160 million dollars in November 2024 to 270 million dollars in November 2025, an increase of 68.75 percent. US spending grew 81 percent over the same comparison, from 160 million dollars to 290 million dollars. Both regions recorded their peak spending in the final week of November, the report states. In APAC, Black Friday spend rose 140 percent year-on-year, climbing from around 5 million dollars in November 2024 to 12 million dollars in November 2025.

Breaking the Black Friday comparison down by channel, Social recorded the sharpest proportional growth. US Social spending nearly doubled, rising approximately 130 percent from 47 million dollars in November 2024 to 108 million dollars in November 2025. EMEA Social spend grew around 81 percent over the same period, from approximately 47 million dollars to 85 million dollars.

Search, while growing more slowly in percentage terms, produced the largest increase in absolute dollar terms. EMEA Search spending reached approximately 125 million dollars in November 2025, up 92 percent year-on-year from 65 million dollars in November 2024. US Search spending also reached approximately 125 million dollars, an increase of around 79 percent.

Display recorded the smallest Black Friday uplift of the three channels in both regions studied. EMEA Display spending held at approximately 47 million dollars year-on-year, showing essentially no growth, while US Display grew 21 percent, from approximately 33 million dollars to 40 million dollars.

At the individual platform level, Google Ads accounted for most of the Black Friday spike Funnel documented. The platform's EMEA spend rose 112 percent year-on-year to 110 million dollars, while its US spend rose 41 percent to 99 million dollars. Facebook Ads also posted substantial gains, up 148 percent in EMEA to 62 million dollars and up 211 percent in the US to 84 million dollars. Smaller platforms, including Campaign Manager 360, Display and Video 360, and TikTok in EMEA, along with Search Ads 360 in the US, also recorded increases during the period, though Funnel's report notes these remained well below the scale of the two dominant platforms.

What Funnel's data scientist says the numbers mean

Armin Catovic, Director of Data and AI at Funnel, described the findings as offering practical guidance for how marketing teams allocate budgets. "Our data across three regions and 5,000 companies is a blueprint for how marketers could and should be allocating spend, and what teams are prioritising moving forward," Catovic said, according to the report.

Catovic pointed specifically to the resilience of Search spending as a notable trend, given the parallel rise of AI-driven discovery tools. "One trend stands out: even as AI answer engines change how people find brands, Paid Search budgets kept climbing rather than shrinking. If anything, they're doubling down while they figure out how AEO affects the funnel," he said.

On the Social side, Catovic characterized the pace of growth as unusually fast, particularly in the European market. "Meanwhile, Social is revealed to be capturing a growing share of digital advertising budgets, with Google and Facebook continuing to pull away from every other platform. The pace of this shift is startling: in EMEA, Social has moved from the third-largest channel to a serious challenger to Paid Search in under two years," Catovic said.

He also offered a caution about how marketers should interpret the shift, framing it as an argument for continued investment across channels rather than a wholesale reallocation toward Social. "Marketers must bear these trends in mind for their own strategies, recognising that blended multi-channel spending is still required for efficiency. Investment in data cleanliness and measurement methods, such as Marketing Mix Modelling, also primes marketers to act on quality insights and spend effectively," he said.

Methodology and limitations

Funnel described its dataset as a representative segment of the total advertising spend flowing through its customer base rather than a comprehensive measure of global or regional digital ad spend. Company counts vary across the three regions studied, meaning the regional figures published are best understood as directional trends within Funnel's own customer data, not as estimates of total advertising spend across EMEA, the US, or APAC as a whole. The company did not publish a full company-by-company breakdown alongside the aggregate figures.

Founded in Stockholm in 2014 by Fredrik Skantze and Per Made, Funnel describes itself as a marketing intelligence platform that collects, models, visualizes, and analyzes data from more than 600 marketing platforms on behalf of its clients. The company has grown to more than 300 employees split between offices in the United States and Europe.

Why this matters for the marketing community

The tension at the center of Funnel's report - AI-driven answer engines reshaping discovery while Paid Search budgets keep growing - is not a new theme for anyone following PPC Land's coverage over the past year, though the scale of the figures here is notably concrete. PPC Land's reporting on Alphabet's second-quarter 2026 earnings found that Google Search advertising revenue rose 17 percent to 63.3 billion dollars even as Google's Network revenue, the segment covering ads served on non-Google properties, continued to decline. That pattern, of Search advertising growing even as the broader open web loses ground to AI-mediated discovery, lines up with what Funnel's smaller-scale, customer-level dataset appears to show: advertisers have not abandoned Search as a channel, whatever concerns exist about organic visibility.

That does not mean the picture is uniformly reassuring for the broader digital advertising ecosystem. Separate PPC Land coverage has documented a steady erosion in Google's Network advertising revenue, the segment that has historically funded much of the open web's publisher advertising, alongside independent research showing declining click-through rates on pages where AI Overviews appear. Funnel's report does not address organic traffic or publisher revenue directly, focusing instead on paid channel spend among its own advertiser customer base, so the two datasets describe related but distinct parts of the same broader shift: what advertisers are willing to pay for, and what happens to the sites and creators whose traffic increasingly depends on a search interface that answers questions without requiring a click.

The Black Friday findings carry a separate significance for anyone planning peak-period campaigns. The scale of year-on-year growth Funnel tracked, 68.75 percent in EMEA and 81 percent in the US, arrives alongside other recent PPC Land coverage of the shopping season. NIQ's July 2026 report on European e-commerce fashion found that Black Friday now drives 9 percent of annual online fashion revenue in Europe, a concentration of consumer spending into a single promotional window that helps explain why advertisers are willing to commit such a large jump in ad budgets to the same period. If a tenth of a category's annual revenue arrives in one week, the incentive to outspend competitors for visibility during that week follows naturally.

Timeline

  • January 2024 - Funnel's two-year measurement window begins; US Search spend stood at approximately 45 million dollars per month and US Social spend at approximately 26 million dollars per month, according to the report.
  • Late 2024 - Social advertising spend overtook Display spend in the EMEA region for the first time, according to Funnel's data.
  • November 2024 - Black Friday spend reached approximately 160 million dollars in EMEA and 160 million dollars in the US, the baseline year in Funnel's year-on-year Black Friday comparison.
  • April 2025 - Ahrefs found a 34.5 percent reduction in organic clicks to top-ranking results correlated with the presence of AI Overviews, an early data point in the broader debate over AI search's effect on organic traffic that forms the backdrop to Funnel's Search-spend findings.
  • November 2025 - Black Friday spend reached its two-year peak across every region Funnel studied, rising to 270 million dollars in EMEA, 290 million dollars in the US, and 12 million dollars in APAC.
  • April 29, 2026 - Alphabet reported first-quarter 2026 earnings showing Google Network advertising revenue falling 4 percent, continuing a multi-year decline tied to AI search absorbing queries that once drove publisher traffic.
  • April 2026 - Funnel's measurement window closes; US Search spend reached 100 million dollars per month and US Social spend reached 65 million dollars per month, the final data points in the two-year comparison.
  • July 22, 2026 - Alphabet reported second-quarter 2026 results, with Google Search advertising revenue rising 17 percent to 63.3 billion dollars, a figure that corroborates Funnel's finding of sustained Search spend growth using a far larger, independently reported dataset.
  • July 30, 2026 - NIQ published its European e-commerce fashion report, finding that Black Friday drives 9 percent of annual online fashion revenue in Europe, context for why advertisers commit large budget increases to the period Funnel measured.
  • July 28, 2026 - Funnel published the final version of its report, covering Search, Social, and Display advertising spend across the US, EMEA, and APAC between January 2024 and April 2026.

Summary

Who: Funnel, a Stockholm-based marketing intelligence platform founded by Fredrik Skantze and Per Made, published the report. The findings draw on advertising spend data from more than 5,000 client companies, including Uber, Adidas, Publicis Groupe, and Havas. Armin Catovic, Funnel's Director of Data and AI, provided commentary on the findings.

What: Funnel found that Paid Search advertising spend grew substantially across the United States, EMEA, and APAC between January 2024 and April 2026, even as Social advertising spend grew faster in percentage terms in some markets. US Search spend rose 122 percent to 100 million dollars monthly, while Social spend in EMEA grew from 18 percent to 33 percent of total budgets. A separate year-on-year comparison found Black Friday 2025 ad spend rose sharply above Black Friday 2024 levels across all three regions.

When: The measurement period covered January 2024 through April 2026, with a separate Black Friday comparison spanning November 2024 and November 2025. Funnel published the final version of the report on July 28, 2026.

Where: The findings cover advertiser spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Why: The report addresses an active debate within the advertising and marketing community over whether AI-driven answer engines are displacing Paid Search as a channel worth funding. Funnel's data indicates that, within its own customer base, Search spend has continued growing rather than shrinking, a finding that aligns with separately reported Q2 2026 Google Search advertising revenue growth, even as broader publisher-facing advertising revenue continues to decline.

The data is a representative segment of the total advertising spend of Funnel's customers.