Data & measurement

IAB Europe's 2026 AI report, out on 24 September, finds 58% expect agentic ad buying in real use within a year and 48% with written AI rules.

German media agencies told the BVDW that AI advertising will reach 94 percent relevance in five years, while classic search advertising falls to 39 percent.

ACI Worldwide and YouGov asked 3,328 adults in Britain and the United States about AI in shopping. Only 7 percent would let software buy on its own.

Digital advertising supported 2.6 million UK jobs in 2026, according to a Public First study for IAB UK.

VML's Future Shopper 2026 says 82% of shoppers have used AI, but 58% check what it recommends and 33% would not let it complete a purchase.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined Google Ireland €403 million on 21 September 2026, over three location settings.

IAB published a survey of 2,200 AI shoppers on 9 September: 56% prefer shopping answers that draw on creator reviews, but only 34% of boomers do.

IAB Europe published a second draft of its in-store retail media standards on 17 September. The industry can comment until 23 October.

Nielsen counted €2.39 billion of gross ad spend in Germany in August, up 0.9%. Online rose 14.7% while TV fell 4.9%.

Infillion is buying Foursquare, Axios reported on 18 September. The deal joins store visit data with the purchase data Infillion got with Catalina.

Pew Research Center found that in 34 of 37 countries surveyed, more people expect artificial intelligence to reduce the number of jobs than to create jobs.

Google added four experimental advertising metrics to the Chrome User Experience Report on 15 September. They cover how many ads fill the screen and what those ads cost in data and processing time.