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118 Digital Marketing Statistics October 2026

Updated 118 primary-source citations Refreshed monthly

On this page
  1. Key Takeaways
  2. How fast is digital marketing growing, and where does the ad money go?
  3. Who is online, on which devices, and what do people do there?
  4. How much buying happens online, and who sells there?
  5. Which channels bring in orders, and how well do online stores convert?
  6. How big are programmatic, connected TV advertising and retail media?
  7. How well can marketers measure digital marketing ROI under privacy rules?
  8. Methodology and Sources

Digital marketing statistics for 2026 describe a market that keeps growing faster than the economies around it while the tools for measuring it fall short. UK advertisers spent £21.2bn on digital advertising in the first half of 2026, up 13% on the year (IAB UK and mediasense, Digital Adspend H1 2026, Sep 2026), and global internet traffic grew 19% in 2025 (Cloudflare, Radar 2025 Year in Review, Dec 2025).

This page stays at the cross-channel level: how budgets split across channels, how people use devices and shops online, how programmatic and connected TV are traded, and how much of it marketers can measure. Single-channel detail sits on the pages for SEO, PPC, email, social media, content and affiliate marketing. Every figure links to the organisation that produced it: statistics offices, regulators, company filings, trade bodies and named research datasets. Surveys and vendor datasets are labelled as such, and the page is refreshed every month.

Key Takeaways

How fast is digital marketing growing, and where does the ad money go?

Video and social grow fastest, search stays the largest line, and the three markets with full-year 2025 reports each grew at a double-digit rate.

Digital marketing statistics: Australian internet advertising expenditure by category, 2019 to 2025
Figure 1: Australia's internet advertising market grew in every year from 2019 to 2025, and video is now its second-largest category after search, so budgets are moving toward video fastest. Source: IAB Australia and PwC, Internet Advertising Revenue Report 2025, Mar 2026. Chart published by the source (report page 6), captured 14 Oct 2026.

How big are national digital advertising markets?

Large, and growing at a double-digit rate in the three markets with full-year 2025 reports. The UK, Canada and Australia all grew their digital ad markets by roughly a tenth or more in a year.

Which digital channels take the largest share of ad budgets?

Search is the largest channel in all three markets, with social media or video in second place. The growth leaders sit below it.

Who is online, on which devices, and what do people do there?

Nearly everyone in rich markets is online and the phone is the first device. Attention is spread across messaging, email, social, video and audio, so no single channel reaches everyone.

Share of individuals aged 16 to 74 using each device to access the internet in 2025, by EU country
Figure 2: In every EU country the mobile phone is the most-used device for going online, ahead of laptops, desktops and tablets, so campaigns and landing pages have to work on a phone first. Source: Eurostat, Digital economy and society statistics, households and individuals, Dec 2025. Chart published by the source, captured 14 Oct 2026.

How many people are online, and on what devices?

Most people in the US and EU are online and nearly all carry a phone. How much traffic mobile carries depends on who measures it: some datasets put it above half and others below.

How much time and money do mobile apps absorb?

More every year, even though new downloads have almost stopped growing. Time and revenue rise because existing users do more in apps.

Where does attention go once people are online?

To messaging, email, social and video, with streaming now a large part of television viewing. Search is only one of several habits.

How much buying happens online, and who sells there?

Online buying keeps taking share from stores, at a steady pace, and a few peak days stand out each year. Most businesses that sell online still lead with their own website.

US quarterly retail sales and e-commerce sales, with e-commerce as a percent of total, adjusted and not adjusted, 2025 to 2026
Figure 3: The seasonally adjusted e-commerce share of US retail sales rose in each of the five quarters shown, and the not adjusted series jumps in the holiday quarter. Source: US Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, 2nd Quarter 2026, Aug 2026. Screenshot of the source table (Table 1, preliminary for the latest quarter), captured 14 Oct 2026.

What share of retail sales is now online?

It depends on the country. Great Britain is well ahead of the US and Canada, though each statistics office defines online sales slightly differently, and the US share climbs in the fourth quarter.

How big are the peak online shopping days?

Big enough to stand out in the annual totals. The 2025 US holiday season set records on spend, single-day totals and instalment payments.

How do businesses sell online?

Mostly through their own websites, with marketplaces as the second route. E-sales are still a minority of turnover for the average EU business.

  • 23.59% of EU enterprises made e-sales in 2024, up from 18.93% in 2014, and e-sales brought in 19.49% of their turnover (Eurostat, E-commerce statistics, Feb 2026).
  • Web sales were 8.39% of EU enterprises' total turnover in 2024, 7.08% through their own websites or apps and 1.30% through online marketplaces (Eurostat, E-commerce statistics, Feb 2026).
  • 85.65% of EU enterprises with web sales used their own websites or apps in 2024, and 45% also used an e-commerce marketplace (Eurostat, E-commerce statistics, Feb 2026).

Which channels bring in orders, and how well do online stores convert?

More traffic does not mean more orders. Shoppers move between search, social, marketplaces, partners and stores before they buy, and the mix is shifting toward social, partner and AI channels.

Distribution of Shopify store conversion rates across 427 stores, from bottom 10% to top 10%, October 2026
Figure 4: Even among Shopify stores the conversion spread is wide: the best stores convert many times as many sessions as the weakest, so site quality matters as much as the channel that sends the visit. Source: Littledata, Shopify and Ecommerce Benchmarks 2026, Oct 2026. Screenshot of the source page, captured 14 Oct 2026.

Which channels are gaining and losing shoppers in a multi channel journey?

Social, affiliates and new AI channels are gaining. Brand-owned properties, traditional search and marketplaces are losing ground with shoppers.

Where do shoppers choose to buy?

Many still prefer stores, but they research on their phones and online first, so the store is the last step of a digital journey.

  • For holiday shopping, 77% of consumers favor physical stores, 69% online marketplaces, 36% brand websites and 30% retailer websites (Salesforce, 2026 Holiday Predictions, Jul 2026).
  • 42% of consumers visit a store specifically to buy something they researched online, and 79% are on their phones while walking the aisles (Salesforce, 2026 Holiday Predictions, Jul 2026).

What conversion rate should an online store expect?

Most stores convert a small single-digit share of sessions, and the median store converts mobile and desktop visits at the same rate.

How big are programmatic, connected TV advertising and retail media?

In the UK, programmatic is no longer a separate channel; it is how most digital ads are bought, and its weak point is quality rather than access. On the supply side, connected TV is where growth sits.

Magnite contribution ex-TAC by channel, connected TV, mobile and desktop, three and six months to June 2026
Figure 5: Connected TV supplied more of Magnite's contribution than mobile or desktop in the second quarter of 2026 and grew while desktop stalled, which shows where programmatic supply is moving. Source: Magnite, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 2026, Aug 2026. Screenshot of the filing table, captured 14 Oct 2026.

Which programmatic and video formats are growing fastest?

Retail media and video lead growth, with connected TV driving most of the video gain.

How much programmatic spend reaches real people?

Under the ANA's measure, most programmatic spend still does not end up as a measurable, viewable, fraud-free impression on a site that is not made for advertising.

How are the ad-tech platforms performing?

Unevenly. Connected TV sellers grew quickly while buy-side and retail media vendors reported slow or falling quarters.

How well can marketers measure digital marketing ROI under privacy rules?

Most marketers use at least one advanced measurement method, a minority use all three, and most say the methods fall short. The tracking layer underneath is being cut back by regulators and browsers.

Percent of marketing mix model users who say each media channel is underrepresented in their models, 2026
Figure 6: Marketing mix models still leave most channels under-covered, with gaming, commerce media and creator marketing worst and digital display best. Source: IAB and BWG Strategy, State of Data 2026, Feb 2026. Chart published by the source (report page 8), captured 14 Oct 2026.

Which measurement methods do marketers use, and how well do they work?

Most buyers use incrementality tests, attribution analysis or marketing mix models, but most also say the methods fall short of what they need.

How much tracking runs on the open web?

A large majority of pages carry at least one tracker, and Google and Meta services dominate the list.

What have regulators and browsers changed?

Regulators are fining consent failures heavily, and browser privacy settings are changing what sites can measure, though few sites follow the industry consent standards.

Methodology and Sources

We collected these figures between 13 and 14 October 2026 and fetched every link on the day to confirm that it loads, carries the number and shows its date. Each number comes from the organisation that produced it: statistics offices (US Census Bureau, ONS, Statistics Canada, Eurostat, ITU), regulators (CNIL), company filings (The Trade Desk, Magnite, Criteo), trade bodies (IAB UK, IAB Canada, IAB Australia, ANA, IAB), platform and infrastructure reports (Google, Cloudflare, Ericsson, Sensor Tower, HTTP Archive) and named research datasets (Salesforce, Adobe, Littledata, Nielsen, Edison Research, Pew Research Center, DataReportal with GWI). Surveys are labelled with who ran them and where the sample is known. Forecasts are named as forecasts. Currency figures keep the currency of the source. Single-channel statistics are left to the dedicated pages linked in the introduction. The page is refreshed monthly.

Sources

Glossary

  • 5G: fifth-generation mobile network technology.
  • ANA: Association of National Advertisers, the US marketing trade body.
  • Attribution: assigning credit for a sale or sign-up to the marketing touchpoints that led to it.
  • BNPL: buy now, pay later, a point-of-sale instalment payment method.
  • CNIL: Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertes, the French data protection regulator.
  • Contribution ex-TAC: revenue minus traffic acquisition costs, a measure ad-tech firms use to compare growth on a net basis.
  • CPM: cost per thousand impressions.
  • CTV: connected TV, television content streamed over an internet-connected device.
  • Incrementality test: an experiment that measures the extra sales caused by a campaign compared with a control group.
  • MFA: made for advertising, sites built mainly to carry ads rather than useful content.
  • MMM: marketing mix model, a statistical model that estimates each channel's contribution to sales.
  • Programmatic: automated buying and selling of ad impressions through software auctions and deals.
  • Retail media: advertising sold on a retailer's own sites, apps or data.
  • TCF: Transparency and Consent Framework, the IAB Europe standard for passing consent signals.
  • TrueAdSpend: the ANA benchmark's measure of the share of programmatic spend that reaches measurable, viewable, fraud-free, non-MFA impressions.
  • TV+: the category IAB UK uses for television-style video spend, which it links to streaming.

Cite this page

Every figure here links to the study that produced it. Quote any of them with a link to this page or the original source.

BlazeHive. "118 Digital Marketing Statistics October 2026." BlazeHive, October 2026. https://www.blazehive.io/statistics/digital-marketing-statistics/
<a href="https://www.blazehive.io/statistics/digital-marketing-statistics/">Digital Marketing Statistics</a> (BlazeHive, October 2026)
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