Ten European Media Groups Launch Ad Marketplace to Challenge Google Dominance

The marketplace represents a coordinated attempt by European incumbents to reclaim the 90% of digital ad growth currently captured by US tech giants. By pooling 'deterministic' telecom data and retail signals into a single buying point, these firms are positioning premium open-web and CTV inventory as a viable, privacy-compliant alternative to walled gardens. For the streaming ecosystem, this creates a more direct, lower-fee path for advertisers to reach high-value European audiences without triple-platform intermediaries. Success depends on whether this unified front can match the scale and ease of use that have historically kept budgets locked into Google and Meta.

The launch arrives as European digital advertising enters a period of high-stakes transition. Per Grand View Research (January 2026), the European online advertising market is projected to reach $153.4 billion in 2026, with video accounting for the largest share at 26%. This growth is increasingly fueled by Connected TV (CTV), which saw its share of media budgets double from 14% to 28% between 2023 and 2025, according to IAB Spain’s 2026 trends report. Marketers are moving toward these premium environments to bypass the fraud and transparency issues that plague the general programmatic supply chain.

Simultaneously, the competitive landscape is shifting. In April 2026, Emarketer projected a historic reversal, forecasting that Meta effectively surpassed Google in net worldwide digital ad revenue for the first time ($243.5B vs $239.5B). This intensifying rivalry between the top tier of global platforms has left independent European publishers struggling to compete for the remaining growth slices. Meanwhile, regulatory pressures are mounting; IAB Spain noted in January 2026 that European firms are under increasing pressure to simplify compliance frameworks while adopting 'agentic' AI systems to manage complex ad workflows.

The marketplace’s reliance on Utiq—a joint venture between Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone—highlights the critical role of telco-backed identity. In June 2026, Utiq integrated its deterministic signals into The Trade Desk’s buying platform across EMEA, signaling a broader industry move toward verified, cookie-less identifiers. By incorporating these signals, the European Media Marketplace aims to solve the 'match rate loss' problem, which Equativ’s 2024 analysis suggested can reach as high as 70% in traditional cookie-based ecosystems.