The key trend of the first quarter of 2026 was the highest growth in search advertising spend in the last two years — advertisers’ investment increased by 14% year-on-year. The main driver was not price increases, but a sharp rise in click volume, which reached a five-year high in the text ad segment. Google has successfully adapted to changes in search results caused by the introduction of AI, whilst the Performance Max campaign has firmly established itself as the primary tool in product advertising, accounting for 67% of all budgets in this niche.
The analysis was based on data from the Tinuiti Digital Ads Benchmark Q1 2026 report, which covers a sample of campaigns with a total annual budget of over $4 billion.
Search advertising
In Q1 2026, spending on Google paid search rose by 14%. It is noteworthy that the growth in budgets is fully in line with the 14% increase in the number of clicks, whilst the average cost per click (CPC) remained virtually unchanged. This indicates high auction capacity and an influx of new traffic, which offsets the inflation in advertising costs.
Google Shopping campaigns
Product advertising showed even more impressive growth: the number of clicks rose by 18%, and spending increased by the same 18%.
- Google was virtually unaffected by Amazon’s partial withdrawal from US shopping auctions — the vacated slots were instantly filled by other retailers, maintaining CPC stability.
- The stable cost per click in Shopping makes this format the top priority for e-commerce in early 2026.
Performance Max (PMax)
Performance Max campaigns continue to dominate. In the first quarter of 2026, PMax accounted for 67% of all Google product advertising spend.
PMax generates ‘weaker’ clicks, but due to their low cost, it delivered a return on ad spend (ROAS) slightly higher than standard Shopping for the first time in a long while.
In Q1 2026, the share of video in PMax stood at 6%, showing a slight decline compared to Q4 2025, but a twofold increase over the year. Meanwhile, the share of non-product search and GDN jumped to 35%, confirming the trend of budgets actively shifting away from classic Shopping towards banners and standard search.
In the first quarter of 2026, YouTube accounted for 12% of all PMax impressions outside of search — almost three times more than a year earlier. At the same time, Google is increasingly running ads on its platforms, gradually reducing the share of impressions on third-party websites and in mobile apps.
Text ads
The text ad segment in search delivered its best performance in five years in terms of click volume, with growth of 11%.
- Brand traffic: An interesting anomaly in Q1 2026 was a 9% drop in CPC for branded queries. This stands in stark contrast to the start of 2025, when explosive growth of 19% was observed.
- Non-brand search: Spending on non-branded queries rose by 5%, confirming advertisers’ willingness to invest in attracting new audiences via text formats.
Video and Display Network
In Q1 2026, advertising on the Google Display Network (including Demand Gen campaigns and apps) became significantly more expensive and scarcer. Traffic on the networks fell by 22%, but prices rose sharply by 41%, causing overall budgets to continue growing by 10%.
- Read more in the Tinuiti Digital Ads Benchmark report.
