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In our exclusive survey with ESW, data from shoppers in 18 countries reveals new twists in the path to purchase, the rising momentum of marketplaces, and the resilience of age-old fundamentals.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淯碍 Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.鈥嬧��

Mercado Libre, Amazon, and Meituan are ecommerce companies; Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest are social media companies; and Kuaishou is essentially both. Roku and Spotify will be the only outliers on the list of fast growers in 2025. It is worth noting, however, that we do not yet have a projection for worldwide Netflix ad revenues, which would likely rank highly in the above chart.

Meta may consider ad-free subscription offer for the UK: While the company settled a suit with a UK citizen, a similar offering in the EU has faced pushback.

In the UK, the biggest broadcasters are starting to utilize YouTube as an additional platform for their broadcast content. Channel 4 reported that views of full episodes of its programs on YouTube were up 169% YoY, surpassing 110 million organic views, as of February 2025. YouTube is also looking to 鈥減remiumize鈥� its CTV service.

Social commerce is gaining momentum in the UK鈥攚ith sales set to double by 2028鈥攁s major brands join TikTok and as more people shop on social platforms.

Total media time is on a steady slide in the UK. By 2026, it will drop to below 10 hours per day, the lowest level in a decade. Digital media鈥攑articularly digital and social video鈥攊s picking up some of the slack, but it won鈥檛 halt the decline.

That enormous figure is slightly down from Facebook鈥檚 2020 peak (46.6%) but still leaves it well in front of sister platform Instagram (31.4% penetration). TikTok will have 1 billion users this year for the first time, but it will still be less than half the size of Facebook.

Fortunately for Meta, Instagram is picking up some of the slack. While Facebook is losing ground among younger users, Instagram has captured some of those migrating away. Among these cohorts, Instagram faces intense competition from Snapchat and particularly TikTok. Keeping everyone in its ecosystem will be a challenge, but growth in the number of Instagram users points to some success.