German media agencies expect AI advertising to pass search in five years

The BVDW, Germany’s digital business association, and its media agency group published the Trendmonitor der Mediaagenturen 2026 on 23 September at Dmexco in Cologne. They surveyed 75 people who work at German media agencies. Those agencies handle more than 90 percent of the digital media billings in the country.

Search falls from 77 to 39 percent in the agencies’ own forecast

Classic search advertising counts as important for 77 percent of the agencies today. In five years only 39 percent expect to say the same. AI advertising and conversational ads, meaning ads placed inside a chat answer, move the other way. They go from 58 percent now to 94 percent. Video leads today and drops to third place, behind AI advertising and work on search visibility. The money behind that forecast is already moving, since OpenAI put its ad business at a billion dollar run rate.

Timucin Güzey from Mindshare calls it a change of era

Güzey speaks for the media agency group inside the BVDW. He describes the result as a real shift, with the search era giving way to AI. The habit is already in place. Some 63 percent of the agencies use AI to take over daily tasks, and 90 percent treat AI skills as a condition when they hire. European ad tech has followed the same path, with Adform signing up as an OpenAI partner.

Agencies forecast 8 percent growth and name data as the block

Demand has not been this strong since 2020. Strong demand for digital advertising is reported by 70 percent of the agencies, against 40 percent a year earlier. They forecast 8 percent growth for next year. The obstacle sits in the data. Joining data across channels is the biggest problem for 69 percent, and 92 percent say one shared data approach decides whether campaigns work. Identifier solutions are central for 69 percent. The market they plan in is already moving, as August figures for the German ad market showed.

More than 80 percent of agencies are uneasy about the big three

Over 80 percent of the agencies say platform dominance worries them. Some 69 percent expect Amazon, Google and Meta to take an even bigger share of the market.

Two dates come out of the monitor. Growth of 8 percent is the forecast for next year. The jump in AI advertising from 58 to 94 percent is set five years out, so 2031. The 2027 plans that German agencies are writing this autumn will show which of the two dates arrives on time.