Social Video Surpasses CTV For The First Time

U.S. digital video ad spend will surpass $80 billion in 2026, up 11% year-over-year, according to the IAB's 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report, growing nearly 20% faster than the total ad market.

For the first time, social video has overtaken CTV in growth rate — and agentic AI is moving from experiment to standard buying workflow faster than most advertisers anticipated.

Social video outpaces CTV for the first time

Social video is projected to reach $31.9 billion in 2026, growing 13% year-over-year. CTV will hit $29.3 billion, growing 11%. That gap marks a reversal: CTV has led digital video growth for several consecutive years.

Reels and TikTok are driving the shift. Short-form video is capturing attention and budget from brands that have historically prioritized streaming placements. CTV continues expanding its inventory in parallel, with YouTube extending unskippable ad formats and Netflix reporting that ad-supported tiers now account for 45% of viewing hours in supported markets.

Digital video will represent more than 60% of total TV and video spend in 2026 — the first time it has crossed that threshold.

Agentic AI enters the buying workflow

Two-thirds of media buyers say they are either live with, actively testing, or planning to implement agentic AI in their media buying workflows, per the report. That adoption rate suggests the technology is well past the pilot stage for most organizations.

Targeting has also surpassed content quality as the top selection criterion for video placements, gaining 10 percentage points year-over-year. That shift reflects both the maturation of contextual and audience-based targeting tools and the sustained pressure on buyers to demonstrate measurable performance against campaign goals.

What this means for advertisers

The $80 billion milestone signals that digital video is no longer a complement to linear TV — it is the primary channel. Marketers allocating budgets for the second half of 2026 should account for social video's accelerating growth, particularly on platforms where short-form formats are driving outsized engagement.

eMarketer's independent projections corroborate the IAB data, placing CTV spend at $37.95 billion with 14.5% growth. The alignment between the two reports reduces uncertainty for planning purposes.

For teams still evaluating agentic AI in their workflows, the two-thirds adoption figure indicates competitive pressure is building. Early adopters are gaining experience with automated targeting and optimization at a point when the learning curve remains manageable.