• by Laurie Sullivan , April 14, 2026

Meta Platforms will overtake Google in global ad revenue and market share in 2026, becoming the leading digital advertising platform, according to Emarketer's forecasts released Monday.

For the first time, Meta is forecast to reach $243.46 billion in net worldwide ad revenue in 2026, with Google reaching $239.54 billion.

Although Google’s share has been falling since 2021, today it still controls 26.4% of global ad spend. Last year, the company generated $214.06 billion.

Last year, Meta generated $196.17 billion in ad revenue. But the company’s share has grown, and this year it is projected to overtake Google with 26.8% of worldwide ad spend. 

“In surpassing Google, Meta has essentially had many of its core strategies validated,” stated Max Willens, principal analyst at Emarketer. “Meta has long understood that scale, network effects, and habits are more important than anything else in digital media.”

In the report, Willens wrote that that Meta is growing at an “unprecedented rate for a company of its scale.”

Meta’s worldwide growth rate is estimated to accelerate from 22.1% in 2025 to 24.1% in 2026, while Google’s growth rate will remain steady at 11.9% this year.

Tools including its Advantage+, AI-generated ad creative, and Meta’s automation stack are improving performance across Facebook and Instagram, with Reels a major beneficiary, wrote Zach Goldner, senior forecasting analyst at Emarketer.  

The transition from manually choosing interests to using artificial intelligence (AI)-driven behavioral signals is a core element of Meta's strategy to recover and grow following privacy changes like Apple's iOS update.

Google has traditionally dominated performance advertising through what the industry calls a "pull" model for search, which fulfills immediate consumer needs.

Algorithmic discovery creates new demand by predicting and presenting products to users they did not know they wanted through feeds and videos.

Google works to find the most relevant answer, but Meta does not wait for a search to be done. It analyzes billions of data points such as likes, how long someone hovered over a video, and what friends bought to predict what the consumer might want before they begin to search for it.

Emarketer forecast the data just prior to the court rulings against Meta and YouTube, but the analyst firm does not expect the verdicts to have a “material impact” on the data.

Amazon sits at the No. 3 position in Emarketer’s estimate for ad growth. Its earnings totaled $68.64 billion in worldwide ad revenue in 2025, and are expected to reach $82.07 billion in 2026 and $97.07 billion in 2027.  

The company’s share of global digital ad spending will reach 9.0% in 2026, up from 8.0% in 2024.