蘑菇AV

More than just a cloud leader: Microsoft ad revenues surged 21%, gaming stabilized, and LinkedIn grew, too.

This is the second installment of our quarterly 鈥淎d Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

41% of US advertisers expecting budget cuts due to tariffs plan to cut from social media, while 24% plan cuts to linear TV and gaming, per February 2025 from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Gaming opportunities for advertisers flourishing: IAB PlayFronts unveiled insights into how marketers can meet gamers where they鈥檙e at.

The feature builds on the popularity of 鈥淭he Six鈥� within Samsung鈥檚 Gaming Hub, where the game saw 42% growth in monthly active users from Q3 to Q4 2024 and nearly 50% growth in early 2025. In early testing, the format delivered a 53% lift in unaided brand recall and was preferred over traditional ads by 89% of viewers, per Samsung and MediaScience research.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss why regulators changed their mind on approving the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal, how the gaming industry will react, and what the deal means for advertisers. "In Other News," we talk about how much of political ad spending has gone digital and how Google is tightening the reins on bulk email senders. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Daniel Konstantinovic and Gadjo Sevilla.

AppLovin exits gaming in $900M sale to focus on AI-driven adtech: The company sells its entire "apps business," shifting its strategy to prioritize ad mediation, automation, and performance-based advertising.

Despite the fact that in-game ad spending will see relatively modest growth over the next few years, games still offer several opportunities for brands. Take advantage of a large audience with solid first-party data. We estimate that about 187 million people in the US across all demographics will play video games in 2024.

Video spending is also being bolstered by some gaming ad dollars shifting to brand advertising. Although it remains a small part of the overall video ad spend, some brands have explored full-screen video advertising within games and other apps.

CES 2025 emphasized a shift to platform-agnostic ecosystems as cloud gaming, e-sports, and cross-platform play redefine the industry

Most in-game ad spend goes to mobile, and most of the ads are bought by game developers. Nonetheless, advertisers should pay attention as intrinsic ads, which appear in games themselves, and programmatic ads increase and as e-sports and other forms of gaming video content take off on YouTube and Twitch. Use this chart:. Evaluate gaming ad spend. More like this:.

Video spending is also being bolstered by some gaming ad dollars shifting to brand advertising. Although it remains a small part of the overall video ad spend, some brands have explored full-screen video advertising within games and other apps.

US adults will spend 10.6% of their mobile time playing games this year, per our forecast. But we expect just 3.9% of US mobile ad spend will go to the category in 2023.