The IAB released the full 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report on July 14 at the IAB Video Leadership Summit. Digital video will pass $80 billion in US ad spend this year and cross 60% of total TV and video spend for the first time. The new data adds a warning: buyers doubt the quality of what they are buying.
What the IAB Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report found
Part One of the report, released in May with Advertiser Perceptions and Guideline, set the market baseline. US digital video ad spend is projected to grow 11% year over year, nearly 20% faster than the total ad market. Social video is growing 13%, faster than CTV at 11% and online video at 10%. That makes 2026 the first year social video notably outpaces CTV.
The full report, released July 14, digs into how buying decisions happen, and the findings are uncomfortable for sellers. Among CTV buyers, 43% expressed “somewhat to no confidence” in inventory quality even for trusted buying methods like direct insertion orders and programmatic guaranteed. Doubt rises to 55% for private marketplaces and 67% for open exchange.
AI answers are mixed too. Nearly all buyers (96%) agree agentic AI has a role in programmatic, but there is no consensus on what that role is. Forty percent want humans in the loop, and half of small and mid-size spenders feel strongly about it. Generative AI is further along in production: nearly two in three buyers now use it for video creative, up from half in 2025, and one-third of ad assets will use it this year.
Live content earned the strongest signal in the report, with 93% of buyers agreeing live is worth more than other video content.
Where the IAB video ad spend data comes from
The findings come from the IAB’s announcement of the full report on July 14, 2026, and the Part One release from May 5, 2026. Both were developed with Advertiser Perceptions and Guideline. The full report is available on IAB.com with a free account.
Why video budget shifts matter for B2B marketing
The trust findings echo a pattern running through B2B media this year. Lunio data showed LinkedIn recording the highest invalid traffic rate of any major ad platform, and Gartner found awareness and conversion now absorb 62.6% of media spend while retention falls. Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s own research found 74% of B2B marketers say buyers distrust traditional marketing. Budgets are moving to video and social at the same moment confidence in what those budgets buy is weakening. For B2B teams, the social-over-CTV flip matters because LinkedIn video, YouTube, and creator content now compete directly with CTV for the same dollars.
Talking Shift: outcomes got video on the plan, audiences keep it there
The most useful line in this report is buried in the middle: buyers now rank targeting and audience reach as equally important as business outcomes. Start Some Shift’s read is that the video market has entered its accountability era, where an outcome a seller cannot explain is treated as an outcome a buyer cannot trust. For established B2B brands, that standard cuts both ways. Machines score your media the way buyers score inventory: on verifiable signals, not on claims. The Binary Buyer Audit applies the same test to your brand itself, checking whether the machine layer and the human layer of your buyer’s journey can both verify what you say about yourself.
Practical implications of the IAB report for B2B marketers
The report points to specific moves for 2026 video planning:
- Demand placement-level transparency from video partners, since 43% to 67% of buyers already doubt inventory quality by channel.
- Rebalance video budgets toward social video where your buyers actually research, before CPMs catch up to the 13% growth rate.
- Ask vendors how agentic AI decisions get audited, because 36% of buyers now want an AI audit trail.
- Keep humans approving externally facing spend commitments, in line with 40% of buyers who want humans in the loop.
- Test generative AI on creative volume, where adoption is already at two-thirds of buyers, and measure against human-made controls.
- Pay the live premium only with proof, since a third of buyers still see measurement gaps in live ROI.
What to watch next in digital video ad spend
Watch whether social video’s growth lead over CTV widens in 2027 projections, and whether the IAB’s transparency findings push sellers to publish inventory provenance data. The report projects generative AI will produce 43% of video ad assets by 2027, so creative supply chains will be the next battleground.
