Ad revenue slowed at five big platforms in Q3. Meta and Pinterest cooled most in Europe

Ad revenue grew more slowly in Europe than in North America at Meta and Pinterest between July and September. Pinterest earned $193m in Europe, the same as a year earlier. Meta’s European revenue rose 21.2%, down from 25.9% in the spring. Across six big platforms, only Microsoft’s search ads grew faster than in the second quarter.

We built this comparison from earnings releases and filings sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). They came out between 21 and 29 October. Each company is compared with its own result one quarter earlier. Where a company gave only dollar amounts, we worked out the growth rates ourselves.

Meta booked $14bn in Europe, but growth fell by almost five points

Meta reports revenue by region based on where the customer is billed. Its Europe figure also includes Russia and Turkey. In the third quarter it reached $14.02bn, up 21.2% from a year earlier. In the second quarter, Europe grew 25.9%. Meta’s total ad revenue slowed far less, from 27.5% to 25.9%.

Pinterest showed a sharper change. Its third-quarter release shows flat revenue in Europe, after 12% growth in the second quarter. In the US and Canada, sales rose 14%. Revenue from the rest of the world grew 24%.

Snap, which owns Snapchat, has not reported yet. In the second quarter its European revenue grew 33%, faster than any other Snap region. It will publish third-quarter results on 4 November.

Five companies slowed and Microsoft sped up

Alphabet earned $82.01bn from Google ads, up 10.6%. In the second quarter, growth was 14.4%. Search rose 12%, down from 16.8%, and YouTube ads slowed from 12.9% to 9.2%. The Alphabet release lists amounts only, so these rates are our own math. We covered the search numbers in our report on Google’s quarter.

Meta made $63.06bn from ads, up 25.9%. A quarter earlier the rate was 27.5%. The dip is small, but the source of growth changed, as the next section shows.

Amazon earned $19.64bn from advertising. Excluding currency moves, growth fell from 26% to 12%. Revenue was also lower in cash terms than in the second quarter. Amazon links this to the timing of Prime Day, its big sales event, as our Amazon story explains.

Pinterest took in $1.17bn, almost all from ads, up 12%. In the spring it grew 18%. For the last quarter of the year it expects growth of 8% to 12%.

Reddit is still the fastest grower. Ad revenue rose 54% to $847m. Yet in the second quarter it grew 64%, so Reddit slowed too. Revenue outside the US rose 67%, after 84% in the spring.

Microsoft gives no dollar figure. It said search and advertising revenue, after the fees it pays partners who send it traffic, grew 12%. The quarter before, that line grew 10%. Microsoft is the only one of the six that sped up.

Meta sold 10% more ads and charged 14% more for each

Meta is the only company here that splits growth into volume and price. Its earnings release gives the number of ads shown and the average price per ad.

In the second quarter, the number of ads grew 14% and the average price rose 12%. In the third quarter, the order flipped. Ads shown grew 10%, while the average price rose 14%. More of Meta’s growth now comes from charging more, not from showing more.

For a brand, that means reaching the same number of people on Facebook and Instagram costs more. Our story on Meta’s creator ads covers another part of the same report. Meta also spent $34.91bn on servers and data centres in the quarter. It now expects to spend $135bn to $145bn on them in 2026.

IAB Europe counted €131.1bn of online ad spend in 2025

The platforms do not break out single European countries. The best country view is the AdEx Benchmark from IAB Europe, the trade body for digital advertising. Its latest edition, published on 7 July 2026, covers 2025.

Europe’s online ad market grew 10.5% to €131.1bn that year. Video grew 19.6% to €34.0bn. Retail media, meaning ads sold by shops on their own sites and apps, grew 16.7% to €13.3bn.

Growth was uneven between countries. Turkey grew 37.0%, but only 1.6% after inflation. Serbia grew 26.0%, Ukraine 22.0% and Croatia 20.7%. Poland reached €2.58bn, up 14.4%, which is faster than the European average.

WPP shrank 1.7% in EMEA while Publicis grew 7.2% in central Europe

Agency groups show where brands send their marketing budgets. Publicis reported organic growth of 5.0% on 13 October. Organic growth leaves out acquisitions and currency effects. Publicis grew 4.7% in Europe and 7.2% in Central and Eastern Europe.

WPP reported on 29 October that like-for-like revenue fell 2.1%. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) it fell 1.7%. Germany grew 2.4%, while the UK fell 1.2%. WPP expects the second half of 2026 to be down by low to mid single digits.

Spotify’s ad revenue rose 10% to €482m, well below Meta’s rate. Netflix cut its 2026 ad revenue goal to about $2.7bn, from about $3bn. From March 2027 it will launch its ad plan in nine more markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We covered this in our Netflix story.

Meta advertisers can check their own 2026 price rise in Ads Manager

The platform numbers are global averages. Your own account shows whether the price rise reached your markets. In Meta Ads Manager, compare July to September 2026 with the same months of 2025. Check the cost per 1,000 impressions for each European country you target. If it rose more than 14%, your costs grew faster than Meta’s global average price per ad.