Affiliate Leaders spoke to a range of marketing experts to get their views on the latest AA/WARC expenditure report.
While search still holds the largest market share for adspend, other channels have seen strong growth, the latest report from the Advertising Association (AA) and WARC, revealed.
Overall adspend in the UK increased by 9.3% to reach a total of £11.7bn in Q1 2026, with search accounting for £4.6bn in investment – equivalent to a 9.8% rise.
However, it was other digital channels that saw double digit growth, including retail media (17.9%), out-of-home (15.01%), social media (17.7%) and addressable TV (15.5%).
Affiliate Leaders spoke to industry experts to get their perspective on the AA/ WARC findings and commerce and AI seem to be the emerging themes about what these figures mean.
Andy Stephen, managing director for retail media at adtech giant Criteo, says that in a challenging macroeconomic environment, “brands are increasingly investing in channels closer to the point of purchase to drive measurable business outcomes” and retail media does just that.
He highlights spend across the channel is “nearly double the growth rate of the advertising market overall”.
Niki Chana, programmatic strategy director at SBS, echoes a similar sentiment. She says: “We know retail media can point to purchase data, while addressable TV brings stronger audience signals into a trusted environment. Both are compelling. The difficulty however is comparing their contribution when each platform defines success differently.”
This is why “agencies need a clearer view of what is creating value across the whole media plan”, especially at a time when there’s more scrutiny over marketing budgets.
‘AI-native advertising not yet reflected’
Chris Keenan, head of agency development at StackAdapt, adds: “The report reflects exactly what we’re seeing from our clients: advertisers are doubling down on channels that no longer force a choice between brand and performance.
“While budgets remain under scrutiny, demand for advanced digital OOH (DOOH) capabilities has remained a key priority as it offers broad reach with both the audience and environment targeting, flexibility and measurement needed to justify every pound spent.”
And AI is playing a key role in determining where spend is allocated, partly because it is giving advertisers more options.
Chana explains: “As choice expands, confidence will come from giving planners evidence they can defend with clients. A rising market creates exciting opportunities but it also raises the standard of proof needed to invest well.”
For Keenan, its “telling that ChatGPT advertising, the largest emerging AI-native advertising opportunity, isn’t yet reflected in reports like this, and neither are other conversational AI environments”.
“As these formats mature and become more important in the media plan, the industry will need to evolve how it measures media investment to give marketers a more complete picture of where advertising is truly heading,” he says.
While for Stephen, AI will play a key role in commerce strategies. “The next phase of growth will come from better use of commerce data, greater connectivity between retailers, brands, agencies and emerging AI platforms, and measurement that moves beyond traditional media metrics to understand true product, category and incremental impact,” he explains.
