Search grew 11% in a market that grew 13.9%

The IAB and PwC put US search advertising at $114.2bn for full year 2025, up 11.0%. The market as a whole grew 13.9%. The year before, search grew 15.9%. Two consecutive readings, both pointing the same way.

Meanwhile social took $117.7bn and grew 32.6%, overtaking search as the largest single format. Digital video grew 25.4%. The money did not leave the market; it moved.

Three explanations, all partly true

• Discovery is migrating. For a large and growing slice of demand, the first move is a feed rather than a query. Social and video are absorbing the top of the funnel that search used to inherit.
• The result page is changing underneath the advertiser. Generated answers occupy space that used to send clicks onward, and the industry does not yet have a stable read on what that does to commercial intent.
• Search was closest to saturation. It is the oldest large format and the most thoroughly optimised, so it had the least headroom to begin with.

Search is not collapsing. It is behaving like a mature channel, which is a different problem and needs a different plan.

What this changes in practice

First, a flat allocation is now a decision to shrink. If the formats absorbing the market's growth hold a constant share of your budget, your reach declines relative to the category whether or not anyone chose that.

Second, branded search needs separating from everything else in the reporting. It is largely demand harvesting, its measured return is spectacular, and almost none of it is incremental. Blending it into a single search number makes the whole channel look healthier than it is and hides where the real work is happening.

Third, plan for a result page you cannot fully see. Anything that depends on a specific SERP layout is a bet on that layout persisting. Build the case for search on its incremental contribution instead, because that survives a redesign.