It marks a powerful symbol in the history of the digital economy. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is on the verge of taking Google’s crown as the world’s leading digital advertiser.
According to projections from market research firm Emarketer, Meta is expected to generate net advertising revenues of $243.46 billion in 2026, surpassing Google’s projected $239.54 billion. A historic first for the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg.
These figures account for traffic acquisition costs and content costs (including the revenue shares Google pays to its partner creators), and they reveal a reversal of the hierarchy that is as symbolic as it is unexpected.
AI, the fuel for growth
The rise of Meta is described by analysts as “unprecedented,” especially given the already colossal scale at which it is operating.
Global revenue growth from the group’s advertising business is expected to accelerate from 22.1% in 2025 to 24.1% this year, according to Emarketer. By contrast, Google is projected to achieve a steadier 11.9% growth.
The engine behind this momentum is unmistakably artificial intelligence. Meta’s AI-powered recommendation system has boosted US View Time on Reels by more than 30% year over year in the last quarter, expanding advertising opportunities correspondingly.
The short-video platform is now on an annual revenue trajectory of about $50 billion, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal. Moreover, AI-generated video tools have reached an annualized revenue run rate of $10 billion by the fourth quarter.
Behind this performance lies a long-term vision praised by experts. Meta has shown “incredible patience” in embedding solid usage habits around its new products—Reels, the Threads social network, and the WhatsApp messaging service—before gradually introducing advertising, notes Max Willens, senior analyst at Emarketer.
This strategy contrasts with the usual eagerness of platforms to monetize their audiences, and today it seems to be paying off.
Google under pressure
Meanwhile, Google is watching its supremacy erode. Its share of the U.S. search advertising market is expected to fall to 48.5% this year, dipping below the symbolic 50% threshold for the first time in more than a decade.
Competition is fierce. Amazon is capturing a growing portion of product searches, while new entrants like OpenAI or TikTok are reshuffling the sector.
Moreover, Google’s diversified business model paradoxically hampers its advertising growth: YouTube Premium, whose subscriptions generate tens of billions in revenue, mechanically reduces the base of users available for advertising monetization.
However, this shift at the top does not change the concentration of the digital advertising market. Meta, Google, and Amazon together are expected to account for 62.3% of the global digital advertising market this year, up from 59.9% in 2024, according to Emarketer.
