This Ad Tech Briefing covers the latest in ad tech and platforms for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →The second-quarter earnings call period is often seen as a reprieve from the traditional summer slowdown, for news junkies at least. If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to pore over the books and try to anticipate what’s ahead for the remainder of 2026. Digital media enthusiasts are currently digesting the eyewatering amounts of dollars flowing into the hands of Big Tech, while bracing themselves for the corresponding returns of their ad tech peers on public markets and using those results as an indicator of how to hedge their bets in the second half of the year.
Shifting sands
Last week saw Amazon and Meta issue their earnings for the period, with the social media giant breathing down the neck of market-leader Google, generating $61 billion in Q2 revenue (up 28% year-on-year), while the e-commerce giants saw a similar growth rate (26%) with ad revenues nearing $20 billion during the period.
For context, Google’s advertising growth rate (14.5%) trailed the above duo during the same period, but its overall ad revenue ($81.6 billion) underscores its place at the top. In normal times, such figures would wow the markets, but in an era of AI disruption, Wall Street investors judged the numbers harshly, predominantly due to the trio’s AI-related capital expenditures, a sign of the shifting dynamics between Madison Avenue and Wall Street.
