IAB Europe AI Survey Finds 86% Use AI, 48% Have Ad Rules

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes · Last updated: 24 October 2026

IAB Europe's second annual AI survey, published on 24 September 2026 at DMEXCO in Cologne, finds that 86% of responding companies use AI for marketing, but only 48% have AI rules written for advertising and marketing. The trade body adds that 72% of those answering are spending more on AI than in 2025, and 58% expect agentic ad buying to be operational or scaled within a year. The base is small. Digiday and the research catalogue Market Radar both put the IAB Europe AI survey at 50 respondents, down from 95 companies in 2025, so its figures show a direction rather than a measure of the whole market.

Why 50 Respondents Change How the Numbers Read

Neither IAB Europe's landing page, credited to Lauren Wakefield, nor its press release gives the sample size or fieldwork dates. Digiday reported that 50 advertising executives in European markets were surveyed over spring and summer 2026, and Market Radar lists the base behind each figure.

Some headline numbers rest on far fewer people. Market Radar shows the 72% investment figure is 21 of 29, the 59% raising spend on AI marketing technology is 17 of 29, and the 2.76 performance score comes from 21 respondents. At a base of 29, one answer shifts a result by more than three points.

No outside research agency is named; IAB Europe built the study with members of its AI Working Group, so the industry's trade body surveyed its own industry. The 2025 edition, released on 18 September 2025, polled 95 companies by email in July and August 2025 in five languages, 51% of them in German. Moving from 85% adoption to 86% across samples that different is not a measurable change.

Spending Rises While AI Scores Below the Midpoint

Digiday reports that 47 of the 50 organisations use AI internally and 43 use it for marketing. That leaves seven whose AI use stops short of marketing and three reporting no internal use at all.

IAB Europe says 72% lifted general AI investment in 2026, while 59% raised spending on AI marketing technologies, a gap suggesting some new AI money is going to other functions. Most of the work is back office: Digiday found 22 of 29 use AI for reporting, analysis and dashboards, about 76%, with programmatic optimisation next at 59%.

Respondents nonetheless rated how AI performs in ad operations today at 2.76 out of 5, under the midpoint; ExchangeWire called the result mixed. Operational efficiency is the most selected yardstick of value, at 69% in IAB Europe's release and 68% in Digiday's account. In the 2025 edition, ad tech firms (60%) were likelier than agencies (48%) to report KPI gains, and under a third of publishers saw CPMs rise.

Agentic Ad Buying Is Expected Far More Than It Is Used

Agentic ad buying means software agents that plan and purchase media with limited human direction. IAB Europe says 58% expect it to reach operational use or scale within a year; Digiday splits that into 30% who see agents becoming a main trading route in some markets and 28% expecting regular use short of that.

Live deployment is thin. Digiday found 36 of 47 respondents have no agentic system in daily operation, or only one that humans still steer or co-plan, about 77%. Among organisations with 501 or more staff, 86% put their most advanced production system at Level 2 or higher, where humans and agents share planning, delegation and execution; at organisations of up to 500 staff the figure is 48%.

Dimitris Beis, Data & Innovation Strategist at IAB Europe, said practice still trails ambition in areas like agentic trading. Ian Maxwell, chief executive of Converge Digital, argued in Digiday's coverage that agents handle only narrow pieces of a big buying process and still need human supervision. Magnite's chief executive expects 2027 agentic ad spend to stay near $700 million at most.

Governance Owners Are Named, Advertising Rules Lag

IAB Europe says 78% of respondents have named a formal owner for AI governance; in 2025, nearly one in five had no formal AI governance at all. Written rules for advertising trail that. Just 48% hold AI guidelines specific to advertising and marketing, up from 43% in 2025, when 68% had general internal AI guidelines.

Katharina Schneeberg, Head of Innovation & Technology at the German digital association BVDW and co-lead of the AI Working Group, said adoption is no longer the key challenge; scaling, governance and converting experiments into results are. She said responsible use of agentic systems will take hands-on guidance, common frameworks and real cases. IAB Europe found 62%, or 31 of 50, want association-built guidelines, against about two-thirds in 2025.

Skills top the barriers in IAB Europe's ranking, at 42%, or 21 of 50. Tool integration or switching providers, implementation cost and legal uncertainty tie at 30% each, with scarce high-quality data at 14%. In 2025, lack of expertise led at 45%, with integration and regulatory uncertainty at 33% each.

Security Overtakes Privacy as the EU AI Act Timetable Moves

Security now ranks first among AI-related concerns, IAB Europe says, with privacy second; in 2025 privacy led and brand safety followed. No percentages accompany the ranking. The shift fits agents that act inside systems: prompt injection, where planted instructions hijack an AI tool, is a security problem first. Beis named it, alongside hallucination, trust and accountability, in an IAB Europe explainer dated 12 March 2026.

On the EU AI Act, 38%, or 19 of 50, are still working out its impact. In 2025, about 60% had assessed it or were doing so, and finished assessments put readiness to comply at 6 out of 10 on average; the 2026 release gives no score.

The timetable shifted mid-fieldwork. On 7 May 2026, EU negotiators agreed through the Digital Omnibus package to delay high-risk deadlines to 2 December 2027 and 2 August 2028. General application arrived on 2 August 2026, and the consolidated text lets the Commission's AI Office impose penalties up to 5% of daily turnover over AI built into very large online platforms.

What could move these numbers

The bottom line

Read as a whole, the IAB Europe AI survey is most useful for its internal contrasts rather than any single percentage: larger firms well ahead on agent autonomy, spending rising while performance scores sit below the midpoint, and named governance owners alongside thin advertising rules. It cannot be set directly against IAB UK's finding, published on 14 May 2026, that 95% of UK digital ad businesses use AI, which rested on more than 250 decision-makers polled by Public First from 17 to 27 February 2026. For vendors selling agentic tools in Europe, the distance between the 58% expecting operational use and the roughly 77% with no autonomous system running is the figure to track.

What to watch

• Watch whether the next IAB Europe edition, expected around autumn 2027 if the trade body keeps its September timing, shows the 58% expecting agentic buying turning into deployment; no date has been announced.
• Watch 2 December 2027, when EU AI Act high-risk obligations for Annex III systems fall due under the Digital Omnibus deal.
• Watch 2 August 2028, the later high-risk deadline EU negotiators agreed in May 2026.