IAB Europe has published the 20th edition of its AdEx Benchmark report, the industry’s broadest comparison of digital advertising investment across 30 European markets. According to the 2025 figures, Europe’s digital ad market grew 10.5% to reach €131 billion, extending a period of steady expansion despite slower economic growth, geopolitical uncertainty and uneven development across markets.
Growth is increasingly concentrated in video, Connected TV, social video and retail media. Video spending rose 19.6% to €34 billion, and for the first time accounts for more than half of all display investment in Europe. Social platforms kept expanding, with social video the fastest-growing format, while retail media grew 16.7% and passed a 10% share of total digital ad spend, cementing its role as one of the market’s main growth engines. More established categories such as display, paid search and classifieds continued to grow too, but at a slower pace than video and commerce-driven formats, reflecting a shift in how advertisers are allocating budgets.
IAB Europe chief economist Daniel Knapp said the 2025 results reflect a deeper transformation in digital advertising, describing a shift from advertising as a communication cost toward advertising as sales infrastructure, with video now over half of display spend and retail media above 10% of total digital investment for the first time.
The same trends are visible in Croatia. IAB Croatia’s Online Media AdEx research estimates local online advertising investment reached €190.9 million in 2025, up almost 23% year-on-year, driven mainly by video, programmatic buying and Connected TV, with further growth expected in 2026.
Vjeko Srednoselec of dentsu Croatia, a member of the IAB Croatia Online AdEx working group, said the results confirm that digital advertising is entering a new phase in which video, Connected TV and retail media are becoming core parts of media strategy rather than niche formats, and expects first-party data, artificial intelligence and more advanced performance measurement to play a growing role in how marketing budgets are invested.
The Croatian figures are compiled by an industry working group in cooperation with Ipsos and feed into the wider European AdEx Benchmark project. The full AdEx Benchmark Report 2025 is available on IAB Europe’s website, with a summary of the Croatian findings published by IAB Croatia.
