Digital Ad Intelligence
Digital ad intelligence is data showing how much companies actually spend on digital advertising, broken out by channel, publisher, and time period. Guideline Ad Intelligence sources this from real agency billing records rather than surveys or estimates, covering CTV, display, video, audio, and social, on a dataset spanning roughly $200 billion in annual media investment across 65 countries.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Quick facts
- Built on anonymized, aggregated actual ad spend and impression data across CTV, display, video, audio, and social, not modeled estimates.
- Guideline Ad Intelligence draws on a proprietary dataset representing approximately $200 billion in annual media investment across 65 countries, one of the largest verified spend datasets in the market.
- The contributor pool expanded by roughly $20 billion in new spend and pricing data in the first half of 2026 through new agency and specialist partnerships.
- Guideline's Global Programmatic DSP Benchmark Report adds more than $33 billion in verified programmatic spend data across six countries, extending digital coverage beyond the US.
- Operates as a flywheel: more contributed data sharpens the benchmarks for every user, the opposite of how panel or crawled-estimate tools scale.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Common questions
How is digital ad intelligence different from estimated ad spend data?
Estimated data is modeled from public signals like impressions or crawled ad placements, and that modeling error compounds the more it's relied on. Digital ad intelligence built on billing data reflects what was actually invoiced. Guideline Ad Intelligence uses billing data exclusively, on a dataset spanning roughly $200 billion in annual media investment across 65 countries.
What channels does digital ad intelligence typically cover?
CTV, programmatic and direct digital display, online video, digital audio, and social advertising are the core channels tracked, standardized into one taxonomy so spend is comparable across channel and publisher. Guideline Ad Intelligence also publishes a dedicated Global Programmatic DSP Benchmark Report covering more than $33 billion in verified programmatic spend across six countries, for teams that need programmatic-specific benchmarks.
Who uses digital ad intelligence data?
Media buyers benchmarking competitive spend, planners setting channel budgets, and analysts tracking market or category trends use this data. Because Guideline Ad Intelligence sources from actual billing records rather than panels, the same dataset also supports institutional investors who need verified, transaction-level signals instead of self-reported platform projections.
