IAB Europe: Digital ad spend in Europe increased by 9.8% in 2022

Now in its seventeenth year, IAB Europe’s AdEx Benchmark study is the definitive guide to advertising expenditure in Europe with data collected across national markets to provide a total figure for Europe. For 2022, IAB Europe has amended the geographical coverage of the study to remove Belarus and Russia and add in new markets; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, meaning the study now accounts for 29 European markets.

Key findings from the study include

• Despite the economic and political headwinds in Europe, €7.7bn was added to the digital advertising market total in 2022
• Amongst the European markets included in the study, Turkey achieved the strongest total growth of 93.3%
• Digital audio saw the largest growth across all formats in 2022 with a 22.1% increase to €0.7bn
• Video also experienced significant growth with an increase of 13.6% to value the format investment at €18.3bn
• Display grew by 9.5% to €40.1bn with search experiencing a 10.7% increase to €37.4bn

Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist at IAB Europe commented on the results: “Brands are digitising their overall businesses to drive efficiencies and in the same vein are shifting advertising budgets into digital. Thus, digital advertising in Europe has experienced robust growth despite the volatile macro environment. It reinforces the importance of digital for brands during a period of downturn due to its measurability and performance.”

The AdEx Benchmark Study highlights can be downloaded here. The full AdEx Benchmark 2022 Report, which will provide full commentary and data across all 29 markets, will be published in June 2023.