Digital ad budgets for search continue to grow. Social channels are gaining ground even faster. Marketers are watching OpenAI’s ad ambitions as Google and Meta hold their lead.
Marketers focused on digital growth are seeing paid search budgets continue to expand, even as answer engines and AI-driven platforms attract industry attention. New data from Funnel, a marketing intelligence platform handling 11% of global digital ad spend, shows that traditional paid search channels like Google remain dominant in the US and EMEA, with spend rising sharply over the past 15 months.
According to Funnel’s analysis of more than 5,000 companies, US paid search spend more than doubled from $45 million to $100 million, a 122% increase. Google’s Alphabet and Meta continue to capture the majority of this growth. Google Ads saw a 112% year-over-year jump in EMEA to $110 million and a 41% increase in the US to $99 million. Facebook Ads also posted strong gains, with EMEA spend up 148% to $62 million and US spend up 211% to $84 million.
Despite the emergence of answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO), paid search remains the largest digital marketing channel across all regions. Social media ad spend, however, is growing even faster. Funnel’s data shows social spend up 150% in the same period, from $26 million to $65 million. In EMEA, social’s share of total digital ad spend jumped from 18% to 33%, overtaking display advertising for the second spot. The US is following a similar pattern, though a few quarters behind.
TikTok is a standout within the social category, with EMEA ad spend on the platform rising from $2 million in January 2024 to $12 million by April 2025. TikTok now ranks among the top five ad platforms in the region, though it still trails Google Ads and Facebook Ads. In APAC, TikTok’s ad spend surged by 400% over the same period.
Ad budgets are also becoming more seasonal, with November-driven by Black Friday-now the peak month for digital ad spend. In EMEA, November receipts doubled from $125 million in 2024 to $270 million in 2025, a 116% increase. The US saw an 81% rise, while APAC posted a 140% jump. Social channels captured most of this Black Friday growth, with US social spend up 130% and EMEA up 81%. Paid search also saw significant spikes during the month.
As the industry tracks OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit model and its plans for a potential $100 billion ad business, marketers are closely watching whether answer engines will disrupt the current balance. For now, traditional search and social platforms remain the primary destinations for digital ad dollars. The evolving role of AI in editorial and advertising workflows is also prompting publishers to set clearer boundaries, as seen in recent efforts by Latin American newsrooms to formalize AI policies and oversight, highlighted in this report on newsroom AI guidelines.
