The latest expenditure report from the Advertising Association and WARC has shown that the UK advertising industry began 2026 positively as a whole, with an increase of 9.3% year-over-year in advertising investment during Q1.
However, a disconnect is revealed when it comes to published media. Regional and national media experienced a decline of 5.9% in revenue, underlining an increasing gap between the rapidly developing platform-driven advertising channels and traditional print and digital publishing models.
News no longer hitting the headlines for advertisers
The drop in spending is most evident in news publishing, where online regional news revenue fell 12.1%, while online national news slipped 0.8%. News publishers continue to compete for the same budgets, but increasingly need to demonstrate the value of their editorial environments rather than simply relying on the attraction of audience scale.
Robin De Wit, Product Marketing Director at Refinery89, believes the latest figures expose a wider structural shift rather than a temporary downturn. “For years the industry has assumed digital advertising growth would naturally benefit publishers,” he says. “These latest figures suggest that assumption no longer holds.” Instead, he argues that future growth will favour publishers “that can clearly demonstrate the quality, context and effectiveness of their inventory.”
The growing demand for performance channels
The channels which enjoyed the most growth in Q1 were those seen as offering performance, impact, and return on investment. Search, retail media, social media, addressable TV, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) all saw strong results. These environments can deliver the rich audience data, clear attribution, and direct connections between advertising exposure and consumer action that marketers demand.
Sarah Lawson Johnston, Managing Director, Global Revenue & Partnerships at Vudoo, emphasises this point: “Marketing budgets are proving remarkably resilient, but that increased spend comes with even more accountability, where every channel must now demonstrate clear commercial value.”
She argues that, as consumer journeys become more fragmented across publishers, creators and retail platforms, “capturing consumer attention is merely the starting point.” The brands extracting the greatest value from budgets, she says, are those that can reduce friction between inspiration and purchase, ultimately “turning everyday engagement into measurable transactional outcomes.”
According to the Q1 2026 report, DOOH was a stand-out channel, with investment surging 17.6% year-on-year, outperforming the wider market by over eight percentage points. As Christoph Berg, Founder and CEO of MINT Square, notes: “DOOH continues to succeed because it bridges the gap between reach and agility. Advertisers get the visual impact of high-profile, physical screens combined with the dynamic creative and contextual targeting of digital.”
The impact of AI
The shift in how campaigns are planned and executed is also being driven by new automated and agentic technologies. As advertisers look for agility, adtech platforms are equipping them to make real-time decisions based on direct performance signals.
Matt Salmon, VP Advertiser Solutions and AgenticOS, EMEA at PubMatic, believes stronger growth in channels such as addressable TV reflects advertisers’ increasing appetite for media that delivers “demonstrable ROI.” He believes AI is accelerating that trend by helping marketers turn existing data into “faster, smarter decisions”.
Ian Maxwell, CEO at Converge, says the report findings signal a structural transformation in how digital advertising is bought. As the boundaries of data, automation and AI continue to blur, he explains that the competitive advantage will increasingly come from organisations able to combine “trusted data and greater transparency” with connected infrastructure, where automation is used to drive meaningful business results, as opposed to just improved efficiency.
How publishers can increase their market share
For publishers, the focus must shift from selling impressions to proving intent and context if they want to improve their offering to advertisers.
Separate AOP and Deloitte Digital Publishers’ Revenue Index data shows publisher revenues declined 4.55% year-on-year in Q1 2026, ending four consecutive quarters of growth. While premium display advertising increased by 5.06%, subscription growth largely plateaued at just 0.63%, with recruitment classifieds, off-platform revenues and digital audio all recording significant declines.
Together, the figures reinforce the challenge facing publishers: growth remains possible, but it is becoming increasingly concentrated around higher-quality advertising propositions rather than legacy revenue streams.
If digital publishers want to capitalise on the content at their disposal, they should take a leaf out of newer channels’ playbooks, harnessing technology that helps them show the direct impact of ads and making inventory more accessible to media buyers. This approach could include: integrating shoppable formats, commerce media capabilities, and calls to action directly into editorial content; or using first-party data and direct measurement tools to prove brand-safe alignment and real conversion impact to agencies. Publishers could also ensure inventory is structured so that agentic buying engines and automated agency tools can execute against it effortlessly.
The latest AA/WARC findings suggest the challenge for publishers is not a drop in overall advertising budgets - which are forecast to increase by a further 8.2% across 2026. It is whether publishers can evolve quickly enough to capture a greater share of that investment.
Great write up Jez, I did one similar today, great minds and all that!