Google, Meta and Amazon proportion of UK ad spent in 2026. Illustration created with help of ChatGPT
Three US tech giants accounted for two thirds of every pound spent on advertising in the UK last year.
New estimates from the Advertising Association and WARC show total UK adspend grew 6.4% in 2025 to a record £46.7bn.
But nearly all the new money went to Google, Meta and Amazon which together accounted for some £31bn of the total according to Press Gazette’s analysis.
Google took the lion’s share of UK advertising via its dominant position in search (with additional revenue from Youtube and adtech services).
Press Gazette estimates Google’s total UK advertising income at £21.5bn for 2025.
Meta came second with estimated adspend on its platforms of £6.5bn.
And Amazon came third with estimated adspend of £3bn.
Scroll down to see the methodology Press Gazette used to arrive at these estimates.
Meanwhile, adspend with the entire magazine and news industry fell 5.1% year on year to £1.6bn. Both print and online revenue fell last year in every publishing segment: national newsbrands, regional newsbrands and magazines.
The data underlines why publishers are working so hard to grow subscriptions, video and events revenue.
It also illustrates why many publishers are so keen to see stronger regulation in place that could help rebalance the online ecosystem to better encourage journalism.
They are accused by many of abusing their monopolistic positions in search and social media to grow ever more dominant whilst failing to fairly reward professional content creators.
Social media adspend (which includes Youtube) was the fastest-growing category measured by AA/WARC, up 21% to £11.5bn in 2025.
Retail media (advertising directly with online retailers) was the second fastest-growing UK advertising segment in 2025, according to AA/WARC, growing 17.5% to £3.8bn. This area is dominated by Amazon.
Search advertising also grew, by 5.8% to £17.9bn.
UK publisher adspend in 2025
Looking at published media:
— Magazines fell 5.1% to £445m (of which online fell 0.2% to £258m)
— National newsbrands fell 4.6% to £695m (of which online fell 0.9% to £345m)
— And regional newsbrand fell 6% to £412m (of which online fell 2.2% to £243m)
In 2007 the UK advertising market was worth £17bn (around £29bn in today’s money) of which £7.1bn was spent with newspapers and magazines (£12.2bn today).
The AA/WARC does not include separate figures for podcasts, but online radio advertising grew strongly – up 14.9% to £89.5m.
How did Press Gazette arrive at this data?
AA/WARC data is based on a survey of media owners and the industry bodies which represent them.
Press Gazette’s estimate of Google’s £16.3bn search revenue is based on its 91% UK market share of search and the £17.9bn AA/WARC estimate for total UK search advertising.
Google’s £3bn (gross) Youtube revenue assumes that UK Youtube advertising revenue has the same proportion to search revenue in the UK as it does globally ( as stated in parent company Alphabet’s published results ).
Similarly, Press Gazette has assumed that Google Network revenue of £2.2bn in the UK (for its adtech services) is in the same proportion compared to search revenue as seen globally in 2025.
To arrive at Meta’s £6.5bn UK adspend estimate, Press Gazette subtracted Youtube’s £3bn from the £11.5bn AA/WARC total for UK social media adspend. We then allocated a proportion of that £8.5bn to Meta based on the proportion of minutes spent with its properties versus Reddit, X and Tiktok ( Ipsos iris data ).
Amazon’s £3bn is based on its estimated 73% share of retail media rounded up to include revenue from its wider online advertising tech stack.
Press Gazette would love to hear from anyone who can see a flaw in this methodology or suggest a better way of doing this. Email: [email protected].
Press Gazette used the same methodology to provide estimates for Google and Meta UK ad revenue a year ago (albeit with AA/WARC data in a different format) and those figures remain unchallenged.
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