US digital video ad spending is on track to pass $80 billion this year, according to the IAB's 2026 Video Ad Spend Report, outpacing growth in the wider ad market. The same report found something less comfortable sitting underneath that number: buyer confidence in inventory quality falls sharply depending on how the video is bought, and 67% of buyers reported somewhat-to-no confidence in inventory transacted through the open exchange. Digiday reported on the findings on 15 July 2026.
What the IAB report says
Two things, and they point in opposite directions. Spending is up. Confidence is not.
On spend, the IAB projects the US digital video market clears $80 billion in 2026, growing faster than advertising overall. On confidence, the report breaks buyer sentiment down by buying method, and the result is a clean gradient.
| Buying method | Buyers with somewhat-to-no confidence in inventory quality |
|---|---|
| Direct I/O, programmatic guaranteed, self-serve | 43% |
| Private marketplaces | 55% |
| Open exchange / RTB | 67% |
Worth being precise about what this is. The IAB is an industry body, and this is a survey of buyers rather than platform-reported data. It measures what buyers believe about the inventory they are paying for. That is a sentiment reading, and it is being reported as one here.
Why 43% is the interesting number, not 67%
The open-exchange result is the headline, and it earns the attention. But the floor is what should stop you. Even in direct deals, where the buyer knows the publisher and the terms are negotiated, more than four in ten buyers still could not say they were confident in what they were getting. The gradient is real. No rung of it reads as solved.
Digiday's read: the supply chain, not the creative
Digiday attributes the trend to fragmented supply chains, unclear inventory sourcing and inconsistent measurement frameworks, and reports that these pressures are pushing buyers toward direct relationships with SSPs. That is Digiday's analysis of why the numbers look the way they do, and it is worth keeping separate from the survey figures themselves.
If that read holds, it reframes a familiar argument. When a video campaign underdelivers, the post-mortem usually lands on creative or bidding. The IAB numbers point at a third suspect that most reporting cannot see: where the impression actually ran. Money is flowing into video faster than the verification around it is being built.
What this means for Thai marketers
Start with the limit. The report is US-market. The $80 billion projection and every confidence figure describe US buyers and US supply. None of it measures Thai inventory, and it should not be quoted as though it does.
What travels is the shape of the finding rather than the numbers. The confidence gradient is a function of buying method, not of geography. An open-exchange video buy is structurally less traceable than a direct deal wherever it runs, because the same conditions produce it: more intermediaries between the buyer and the impression, and less visibility into where that impression came from. A Thai advertiser buying video through open exchanges is exposed to the same category of risk, arguably with a thinner set of local verification tools to check it against. That reasoning strengthens the case for direct and PMP deals and for independent measurement. It is reasoning from US data, not a finding about Thailand.
The practical version is unglamorous. If you cannot answer where your video impressions ran, and on whose data you are answering, then the efficiency conversation you are having about creative and bids is happening one layer too high. A measurement setup that reports independently of the buying platform is what makes the question answerable at all. For video budget running on YouTube and other owned-inventory environments, the provenance question is at least tractable. On open exchanges it often is not.
FAQ
Is this Thai data?
No. Every figure from the IAB report cited here is US-market. The reasoning in this article about Thai implications is inference from the structure of the finding, not local data.
Does this mean open-exchange video is bad inventory?
The report does not say that. It reports that buyers lack confidence in it, which is a statement about verification and transparency rather than a verdict on quality.
Should we move all video budget to direct deals?
The survey does not support a blanket answer. What it supports is asking what your open-exchange share currently is, and whether you can verify it.
Where this leaves your video plan
The IAB report is a survey, and surveys measure belief. But belief among buyers with $80 billion between them tends to move where the money goes. The signal to take from it is a question to ask of your own plan: how much of your video spend sits on the rung with the 67%, and what would it take to find out?
If that question is hard to answer with your current reporting, that is the thing to fix first. Relevant Audience can help you build the measurement that answers it before you rebuild anything else.
