Will Meta Really Take Google's Digital Ad Crown at the $240 Billion Mark?
Our analysis points to Google remaining top dog, but the bronze medal winner may surprise you.
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Meta
Research firm eMarketer, which is a great source of data as well as insightful charts and tables, is out with a report in which it calls for Meta (META) to dethrone Google (GOOGL) later this year for the digital advertising crown. It calls for Meta’s global net ad revenue to reach $243.46 billion in 2026, ahead of Google's projected $239.54 billion.
Not So Fast...
If you read those figures and thought they sounded off to you, we had the same inclination. Looking at Google’s 2025 10K filed in February and reading the second note in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, we see that its Google advertising revenue hit $294.7 billion last year. Here’s the thing, eMarketer’s outlook for Google’s advertising revenue calls for it to “remain steady at 11.9% this year.” That would imply a figure near $330 billion.
Doing the same steps with Meta, its 2025 10K filed in late January, shows that of its $201 billion in total revenue for last year, advertising revenue accounted for $196.18 billion or 97.6% of total revenue. Applying eMarketer’s expected 2026 revenue increase of 24.1% to that figure kicks out $249.44 billion.
In both cases, eMarketer’s math doesn’t add up, and it reaffirms why we double-check facts and figures in forecasts like these. It also doesn’t point to Meta taking the digital advertising crown. We do expect to see Meta’s advertising revenue growth accelerate as it monetizes more of its app platform, including WhatsApp and Threads. To us, however, the larger story at Meta is the internal leveraging to improve profitability at the core business even as it continues to invest in AI.
Amazon Projected for $82 Billion
The same eMarketer report calls for Amazon's (AMZN) advertising business to reach just over $82 billion this year, up from $68.6 billion in 2025. That implied level of revenue growth near 20% is far quicker than the market consensus that calls for Amazon’s total top line to grow 11.6% this year compared to 2025. That is a brisk clip, but we also know Amazon is continuing to leverage Prime Video as well as its digital shopping sites to drive the high-margin ad revenue stream higher. It also gives us reason to think Amazon’s margins may not be under as much pressure as implied by management’s guidance issued back in early February.
Based on eMarketer’s pecking order, Amazon will have the third-largest digital advertising revenue stream this year. Together, Google, Meta and Amazon should account for more than 60% of total digital advertising spend in 2026.
Fuzzy math for Google and Meta aside, perhaps the key message to focus on is the continued shift to digital advertising that will come at the expense of traditional media (print, broadcast, and radio). There will likely be some market share shifts across companies, like Snap (SNAP) and Pinterest (PINS) , that rely on digital advertising to power their revenue stream.
Google will report its Q1 2026 results on April 29, and we look forward to Meta and Amazon formally announcing their reporting dates for the quarter.
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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AMZN, GOOGl and META.
