Digital 2026 Global Overview Report
If you’re looking for the latest digital trends, you’re in the right place: our latest Global Digital Report is packed with momentous milestones for internet adoption, social media use, and the rise of AI.
And that’s not all…
Your comprehensive guide to digital in 2026
The Digital 2026 Global Overview Report – published in partnership with Meltwater and We Are Social – is the most comprehensive report yet in our Global Digital Reports series.
Weighing in at 700 pages, it has everything you need to know about:
Internet access and usage trends
Mobile ownership and use
AI adoption and use around the world
Social media behaviours and platform preferences
Ecommerce activity
Online entertainment
Digital marketing trends, including ad spend and engagement
Top headlines and findings in this year’s report include:
More than 6 billion people now use the internet
Social media users have reached “supermajority” status
More than 1 billion people now use AI every month
Insights into what people are actually using AI for
Big new numbers for digital connectivity in India and China
Perspectives on the world’s most popular social media platforms
The state of advertising around the world
The outlook for search as AI gains momentum
The changing face of TV
How social media expectations are evolving
However, that’s just a fraction of what you’ll find in the full report.
But why are we publishing our Digital 2026 report in October 2025?
Faster futures
Over the past decade, we’ve published our flagship Global Digital Reports at the start of each year.
However, we know that many of you start developing your annual plans towards the end of the preceding year.
So, to better align with your planning cycles, we’ve brought our publishing cycle forward, bringing you everything you need to build the most informed digital strategy for the year ahead.
Our Digital 2026 Global Digital Overview Report is out now – read on below to explore that – and we’ll continue our Digital 2026 series with individual country reports starting in November 2025.
The ultimate collection of digital data
As always, we’d like to start by extending our heartfelt thanks to our wonderful data partners, who provide the world-leading data you’ll find in this year’s reports:
Authenticity statement
All of this analysis has been written by Simon Kemp without the use of generative AI, except for the five quotes overtly attributed to AI tools within the final section of this article [why does this matter?].
Simon has been producing the Global Digital Reports series for almost 15 years, so he’s intimately familiar with the global “state of digital”, and how people’s online behaviours are evolving.
If you’d like to follow Simon’s regular analysis, you can connect with him on LinkedIn.
⚠️ Important notes
As you explore this latest report – and especially as you compare trends over time – please be aware of the following:
We’ve historically published our Global Digital Overview Report using the latest data available in January of the respective year, but the present Digital 2026 Global Overview Report relies on data up to October 2025. Consequently, comparing data in our Digital 2026 Global Overview Report with Global Overview Reports from previous years will not deliver accurate year-on-year trends. As a result, we strongly encourage readers to rely on the data for trends over time published within our reports, instead of trying to calculate trends using data from different reports.
Please note that we’ve changed the sources we use for a variety of data points over the past year. Similarly, some of our data partners have changed their research and reporting methodologies, and some have changed the scope of the behaviours and attitudes associated with certain data points. As a result, please read each slide carefully in order to understand what the data shows, paying particular attention to chart titles, subtitles, and footnotes.
Since our previous report in July 2025, the ITU has made significant revisions to its internet adoption figures for China and India, based on new data published by those countries’ “official” reporting bodies. These revisions have had a significant impact on various data points in this year’s reports, most notably our figures for global internet use and global social media user identities. Please also be aware that these revisions may have an important impact on figures for change over time.
In addition to the notes above, please refer to our comprehensive notes on data to learn about other recent changes to data and sources in the Global Digital Reports series.
The complete report
You’ll find our complete Digital 2026 Global Overview Report in the embed below (click here if that’s not working for you), but read on past that to find an in-depth analysis of what all these numbers actually mean for you and your work.
The global state of digital in October 2025
Let’s begin with our usual look at the latest global headlines:
The United Nations’ World Populations Prospects data shows that there are 8.25 billion people living on Earth today, with that figure increasing by 69 million (+0.8 percent) since October 2024. The UN’s data also highlights advancing urbanisation, with 58.4 percent of the world’s population now living in urban centres.
GSMA Intelligence’s latest research indicates that there are 5.78 billion unique mobile users around the world in October 2025, which equates to 70.1 percent of the global population. The worldwide unique subscriber figure has increased by 108 million over the past 12 months, delivering annual growth of 1.9 percent. And for added perspective, data from Ericsson shows that smartphones now account for roughly 86.9 percent of the mobile phone handsets in use, and 83.7 percent of total cellular mobile connections.
Kepios analysis indicates that the total number of people using the internet reached 6.04 billion by the start of October 2025, resulting in a global internet penetration figure of 73.2 percent. Reported internet user figures have increased by 294 million (+5.1 percent) over the past year, but a large portion of this apparent growth can be attributed to revisions in adoption figures for India. Moreover, despite these impressive growth figures, 2.2 billion people around the world remained offline at the time of report publication.
Kepios analysis reveals that global social media user identities now stand at 5.66 billion, with that figure equivalent to 68.7 percent of the global population. The total user identities figure increased by 4.8 percent in the 12 months to October 2025, thanks to the addition of 259 million new identities [note that “user identities” may not represent unique human individuals.]
Those figures provide a handy overview of global digital adoption and use in October 2025, but they offer little indication of how people’s digital behaviours are actually evolving.
In order to make sense of those behavioural trends, we need to dig deeper into the numbers – and that’s exactly what this article will help you do.
However, despite clocking in at more than 12,000 words [ahem], this article still doesn’t contain all of our analysis of this year’s numbers, so be sure to look out for links to our Digital 2026 “deep-dive” content as you make your way through each section.
But even without that deep-dive content, you’ll still need a good hour to read this article, so you may want to grab some refreshments and get comfy before you read on.
Digital growth in context: population trends
In order to make full sense of trends in digital adoption and use, it may be helpful to start by exploring broader trends in the overall population.
The latest World Population Prospects data from the United Nations indicates that there are now 8.25 billion people on Earth, which means that the global population has increased by a quarter of a billion people in less than three years.
However, the UN’s data also indicates that global population growth is slowing, with the latest figures indicating a year-on-year increase of 0.8 percent.
For context, the global population was growing at an annual rate of roughly 1.2 percent at the start of the 2000s, while the annual growth rate was as high as 2.3 percent in the early 1960s.
Meanwhile, from an absolute perspective, the United Nations’ figures point to an increase of 69 million people over the past 12 months.
That still equates to an average of an additional 2.2 people each second, but that’s meaningfully lower than the average growth of 3.0 people per second that the world experienced in 1990.
However, despite this deceleration in growth, the size of the global population has still increased by more than 50 percent since internet adoption started to gain meaningful momentum at the start of the 1990s.
▶ Dive deeper: looking for more population data? Explore a wealth of trends in this dedicated article.
Six billion internet users
Kepios’s analysis of the latest internet adoption data reveals that more than 6 billion people are now online, with global internet penetration jumping to 73.2 percent.
This figure marks yet another impressive milestone on the world’s digital journey, and suggests that the global internet user figure has doubled in just under 11 years, having reached the 3-billion user mark in early November 2014.
And for added perspective, when the first website appeared on the “world wide web” back on the 6th of August, 1991, there were barely 5 million people around the world using the internet.
And despite today’s impressive figure, data indicates that internet user numbers continue to grow, too.
Changes in individual countries’ reported figures indicate that the global internet user total has increased by 5.1 percent over the past 12 months, thanks to the addition of 294 million new users.
However, it’s important to stress that significant revisions to internet adoption figures in India have played a major role in fuelling the current growth figure.
1 billion people online in India
More specifically, a recent report from India’s National Statistics Office (NSO) indicates that 7 in 10 Indians are now online, with the latest 70.0 percent penetration figure more than 10 percentage points higher than the 58.4 percent figure reported by Kantar and the IAMAI just a few months ago.
It’s important to highlight that the NSO’s figure represents internet use amongst Indians aged 15 and above, and there’s a realistic possibility that internet adoption amongst younger age groups may be lower than this adult average.
However, the same study reports that 86.3 percent of all Indian households now have some form of internet connection, so – while younger Indians may not own the devices necessary to access the internet on their own – there’s a realistic possibility that Indian children below the age of 15 are regularly accessing the internet using family devices.
Moreover, the guidance we received from the ITU was to apply the NSO’s adoption figure to the population as a whole, because it is the most representative indicator of current internet use across the country.
And if we apply that 70 percent adoption figure to the UN’s current population figure, the latest data indicate that more than 1 billion people in India now use the internet.
Chinese internet adoption revised upwards
Meanwhile, China’s internet reporting body has also published significant revisions to its figures for internet use in the world’s second most populous country.
CNNIC’s latest (56th) report on internet adoption in China indicates that a hefty 91.6 percent of individuals in the country now use the internet or internet-powered services.
Interestingly, this particular figure is reported in an annex at the end of the main report, but based on our conversations with the ITU – the primary body responsible for collecting “official” internet adoption figures on behalf of the United Nations – it seems that this annex figure is indeed the most representative value for overall internet adoption in China.
We’ve also been able to “rebase” our internet user figures for China for the past year based on CNNIC’s published data, so these revisions haven’t impacted our most recent figures for annual growth, although you will see some more abrupt “jumps” further back in our time series where we haven’t been able to rebase the data.
CNNIC’s revised adoption figure lifts the number of internet users in China to almost 1.3 billion, meaning that China is now home to roughly 21.5 percent of the global connected population, equating to more than 1 in 5 of the world’s internet users.
And as a result, even though Eastern Asia also includes the world’s least connected country (more on that in a moment), the region is now home to almost a quarter (24.6 percent) of all the world’s internet users.
More than 2.5 billion people still offline
But despite these impressive gains in reported internet use, it’s important to stress that more than 1 in 4 people around the world remain offline at the time of writing.
Kepios’s latest analysis indicates that a total of 2.21 billion people do not yet use the internet in October 2025, with the majority of the world’s offline population living in Southern Asia and Central Africa.
On an absolute basis, India has the largest unconnected population, with official figures suggesting that more than 440 million people remain offline in the Southern Asian state.
However, North Korea still has the world’s lowest levels of internet adoption, with the country’s ongoing government ban ensuring that fewer than 1 in every 100 of its citizens has access to the internet today.
Women still underrepresented online
Furthermore, at a global level, data shows that women and rural populations are still disproportionately less likely to use the internet.
For example, Kepios analysis indicates that 70.7 percent of women around the world are now online, but that figure still lags behind the 75.7 percent of men who use the internet today.
It’s important to acknowledge that this “digital gender gap” has narrowed over recent years, but the latest data still suggest that – relatively speaking – men are roughly 7 percent more likely to use the internet than women, and there are still nearly 240 million more men using the internet than there are women online.
And this digital gender imbalance is evident in our latest social media data too.
Kepios analysis of ad reach data published by the world’s largest social media platforms indicates that 54.4 percent of social media users around the world are male, compared with just 45.6 percent for women.
Rural populations less connected
Meanwhile, data indicate that digital’s “location gap” is even more pronounced than its gender gap.
Kepios analysis indicates that just 54.5 percent of the world’s rural populations are online today, which is markedly lower than the 86.5 percent internet adoption figure that we see amongst urban populations.
For perspective, the United Nation’s latest population data indicates that 58.4 percent of all the people on Earth now live in urban centres, but data suggest that these urban areas account for nearly 7 in 10 (69.1 percent) of the world’s current internet population.
There may be various reasons for this imbalance, but – in many cases – a lack of internet adoption coincides with a similar lack of access to other core infrastructure.
For example, in Ethiopia – where more than three-quarters of the country’s 136 million inhabitants live in rural areas – barely half of the population has access to electricity and basic drinking water services, and these challenges are particularly prevalent in rural areas.
The cost of access is still an issue
Meanwhile, cost is another important consideration when exploring lower levels of internet access.
The latest analysis by the ITU suggests that both fixed internet and cellular data plans remain prohibitively high in some parts of the world, meaning that many people need to rely on services like free public WiFi to go online.
For example, the ITU’s analysis indicates that the cheapest non-promotional cellular data plan in the Central African Republic costs the equivalent of more than a quarter (26.7 percent) of the typical monthly income, which may be one of the primary reasons why the country’s internet adoption rate is a dispiritingly low 12 percent.
However, broader infrastructural challenges likely play an important role in pushing up the price of internet access in these areas, so the affordability of cellular data is itself often a consequence of other underlying issues, rather than being the “root cause” of limited internet access.
▶ Dive deeper: explore internet use by device, connection speed and quality, and other essential trends in our complete overview of internet connectivity.
Social media users are a supermajority
And increased levels of internet access have also helped fuel growth in social media numbers.
Kepios’s analysis of the latest data published by the top social media platforms indicates that there are now 5.66 billion active social media user identities at a worldwide level, which equates to 68.7 percent of the total global population.
Moreover, our social media user figure continues to show impressive growth, with the global total increasing by 4.8 percent over the past year, thanks to the addition of 259 million new identities.
Understanding our social media user identities figure
For context, Kepios uses the potential advertising reach figure for the individual platform with the greatest ad reach in each country as the basis for its social media user identities figures.
This approach reduces the potential for double-counting people who use more than one platform each month, which is particularly important when we consider that GWI’s data shows the vast majority of adult social media users make use of two or more social media platforms each month.
But despite Kepios’s conservative, “single-platform” approach, it’s important to note that the top social platforms all acknowledge that their potential reach figures may include some degree of duplicate and “false” accounts, and this may inflate ad reach figures (as compared with unique, human users).
And there may be some evidence of this in our user identities data, with potential adult reach figures exceeding the total adult population in a number of different countries.
However, in addition to duplicate and false accounts, issues such as user age misstatements may also play an important role here.
For example, our analysis suggests that there are a meaningful number of real humans below the age of 18 who “misrepresent” their real age on social platforms, in order to access age-restricted content.
Meanwhile, differences between countries’ “official” census counts and their actual resident populations can also lead to significant anomalies when comparing audience reach with population, and this issue may be particularly prevalent in the Arabian Gulf.
For example, government data suggests that more than 4 in 10 people living in Saudi Arabia are “non-Saudi”, while expats may account for almost 90 percent of the UAE’s total residents.
So, while data for specific age groups and geographies may sometimes appear distorted, such anomalies do not necessarily imply that social media user numbers are “incorrect”, or that they have been artificially inflated by “non-human” identities.
And for added perspective, GWI’s data indicates that none of the ad-supported social platforms reach 100 percent of social media users in any given country.
As a result, the potential for user duplication in platforms’ ad reach data is somewhat mitigated by the undercounting that results from only including reach data for the single largest platform in each country.
For perspective, Kepios’s analysis indicates that its social media user identities figure equates to 93.8 percent of all the world’s internet users (regardless of age), whereas GWI’s survey data indicates that 96.9 percent of internet users aged 16 and above use at least one social platform each month.
So, while it’s important to acknowledge the caveats detailed above, we’re confident that our social media user identities figure is reliably representative of actual human individuals.
2 in 3 people now use social media
And as a result, we’re confident that these latest figures confirm that more than 2 in 3 people on Earth now use social media each month.
This means that social media users are now a “supermajority”, with twice as many people using social media each month as not using it.
That’s another truly remarkable milestone, especially when we consider that social media has been around for less than 30 years [if you’d like to explore a more detailed “history” of social media use around the world, you might enjoy this detailed timeline from our Digital 2024 reports].
But perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that more than half of the current total only started using social media within the past 10 years.
Indeed, Kepios analysis indicates that social media user identities stood at just under 2.27 billion in October 2015, when the global “adoption” rate was equal to 30.3 percent.
Since then, our global social media user total has increased by close to 3.4 billion users, resulting in an average of more than 28 million new users every month, or almost 1 million new users per day.
Admittedly, more recent figures suggest that current monthly growth is somewhat lower than that ten-year average.
For example, the latest quarter-on-quarter figures put average monthly growth at 20.5 million, while the annual growth figure puts the average closer to 21.5 million new user identities per month.
Having said that though, while it’s important to acknowledge a slowdown in growth, social media user numbers continue to grow at an impressive rate.
In other words, while AI may have stolen the limelight when it comes to mainstream media headlines, there’s still absolutely no evidence that social media might be “dying” as we head into 2026.
Moreover, the latest research from GWI shows that – overall – social media ads are still internet users’ third most important source of brand awareness after search engines and TV ads, with more than 30 percent of adult internet users saying that they discover new brands, products, and services via ads on social platforms.
And critically, social media ads are actually the top driver of brand awareness amongst audiences aged 16 to 34.
So, just in case you’re wondering whether social media should still have a place in your brand’s marketing mix in 2026, the available data certainly seem to present a compelling case for its continued inclusion.
▶ Dive deeper: make sense of how to harness the latest social media trends in comprehensive “state of social media” analysis.
More than 1 billion people use AI every month
But what about the “hottest” topic in digital today?
Somewhat frustratingly, it’s still challenging to put an exact figure on global AI use, but Kepios’s analysis indicates that more than 1 billion people now use LLMs and GenAI platforms each month.
It’s important to note that this figure relies on extrapolations of data from multiple sources, so we’re unable to provide a more “granular” number, which is why you won’t find one in our Digital 2026 Global Overview Report.
However, as we’ll demonstrate below, the evidence for a ten-figure active user total is compelling.
Use of top AI platforms
To avoid confusion, it’s worth noting that Similarweb’s figures for ChatGPT use are somewhat lower than those reported by OpenAI
Moreover, the figures you’ll find in our Digital 2026 Global Overview Report relate to separate use of each platform’s web tools and mobile apps.
Even then though, Similarweb’s data indicate that more than 550 million people use ChatGPT’s mobile app each month, while close to 500 million unique “device identities” visited ChatGPT’s web platform in August 2025.
There will inevitably be some degree of overlap between ChatGPT’s mobile app users and web platform visitors of course, but nonetheless, these figures are already impressive.
However, OpenAI’s own figures indicate significantly higher levels of ChatGPT use.
For example, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, reported that ChatGPT already had 800 million weekly users during an event in early October 2025.
Meanwhile, Kepios analysis of August 2025 data from Similarweb suggests that ChatGPT’s monthly active user figure should be roughly 1.3 times higher than its weekly active user figure, which puts the likely monthly user figure for ChatGPT around 1 billion in its own right.
And furthermore, Similarweb’s data shows that ChatGPT’s user base “only” accounts for 4 in 5 active users of a selection of the top LLMs outside of China.
So, despite OpenAI’s impressive market share, data suggests that somewhere between 100 million and 200 million active AI users do not use ChatGPT each month.
And if we add these users of other platforms to the ChatGPT figure we saw above, we’re already well into ten-figure territory.
But it’s also important to remember that ChatGPT remains blocked in China, so – in order to identify a global AI user figure – we also need to factor separate AI use in China.
And critically, a July 2025 report indicated that China is now home to 250 million “AI agent users”, which is more than sufficient to push our global user figure well above one billion.
So, while an exact figure remains elusive, the available evidence indicates that there are now well over 1 billion people around the world using standalone AI platforms each month.
And just for clarity, the reason we reference “standalone” AI platforms is that Google has already announced that its AI search summaries already reach more than 2 billion active users each month.
Excitement about AI
Recent research from GWI suggests that there’s still plenty of scope for that user total to increase, too.
For example, close to half of the world’s online adults say that they’re “excited” about artificial intelligence, with that share figure edging up over recent months.
Having said that, we should acknowledge that this same figure might also imply that more than half of connected adults are “not” excited about AI [even if the lack of an affirmative does not necessarily imply a negative].
However, just based on GWI’s “excited” figure alone, there’s credible potential for that standalone AI user figure to double within the foreseeable future.
As a result, we expect to see plenty more impressive AI user milestones in the months ahead.
▶ Dive deeper: Want to understand what people are actually using AI for? Explore a wealth of insights in our extensive analysis.
Ad spend trends
Data from Statista’s Market Insights products reveal that the world’s marketers are on track to spend USD $1.16 trillion in 2025, with that global total up by 6.5 percent compared with 2024 levels.
Statista’s data shows that annual growth in global ad spend has slowed over the past year compared with growth over the past couple of years, but current trends still show a healthy increase in total advertising spend.
Compared with the size of each country’s total economy, the UK sees the highest “weighted” spend on advertising amongst the world’s largest economies, with ad spend in the country projected to amount to 1.65 percent of total GDP in 2025.
The United States ranks second in this dataset at 1.49 percent, while Japan ranks third, at 1.34 percent.
And for context, China ranks fourth, which helps to bring the global average up to just over 1 percent of global GDP.
However, Statista’s data indicates that ad spend equates to less than a quarter of one percent in Saudi Arabia, Ghana, and Turkey, and it falls as low as 0.19 percent in Pakistan.
However, the USA will still see the world’s highest rates of ad spend per capita in 2025, with Statista’s data indicating that the marketing industry as a whole will spend an average of USD $1,327 for every one of the country’s 347 million inhabitants.
The UK ranks second in this dataset, with average ad spend per capita reaching USD $930 in 2025, while Australia and Switzerland are neck-and-neck on USD $769 of ad spend per person.
Pakistan also finds itself at the bottom of this ranking though, with the marketing industry investing just USD $2.88 per person to reach the country’s 250+ million inhabitants in 2025.
Digital domination
Digging deeper into the data, Statista’s analysis indicates that digital channels will account for close to three-quarters of total ad spend in 2025 – 74.4 percent – which represents a relative increase of 2.4 percent (+1.7 percentage points) compared with the 2024 share figure of 72.7 percent.
For broader perspective, Statista’s data indicate that “traditional” channels still accounted for more than half of global ad spend as recently as 2018, but the dramatic impact of COVID-19 lockdowns at the start of the decade saw ad spend swing significantly towards online media.
Search ads are still top choice
Depending on how we aggregate the data, Statista’s analysis indicates that online search advertising accounts for the single largest share of ad spend, well ahead of spend on both online video and traditional TV advertising.
Indeed, Statista’s projection for search ad spend in 2025 is USD $352 billion, which is less than 1 percent below its combined figure for TV and online video.
And that figure means that advertisers will spend just below USD $1 billion per day on search advertising in 2025.
Just for clarity, the white bars in the chart below represent aggregate values across multiple channels, with “in-app” spend including a portion of spend on other channels like social media and banner ads.
Investments in search advertising continue to grow too, with Statista projecting a worldwide annual increase of 11.1 percent for 2025.
Moreover, search appears to have been the biggest beneficiary of the “shift to digital” over recent years, with global spend on online search advertising more than doubling since 2020.
Social media enjoys double-digit ad growth
Search isn’t the only advertising channel enjoying strong growth though, and Statista’s data suggests that social media ad spend may be growing even faster than search.
The company’s projections for 2025 indicate that worldwide spend on social media advertising will increase by 13.6 percent on a year-on-year basis, to reach USD $277 billion for the year as a whole.
That means advertisers will spend more than USD $5 billion per week on social media ads this year.
Social’s share of ad spend continues to grow too, with Statista projecting that social media ads will account for 32.1 percent of total digital ad spend in 2025.
And for added perspective, Statista’s figures indicate that combined spend across online search and social media will equate to roughly 54 percent of global advertising spend across all channels this year, including both “traditional” and online media.
Online retail advertising surges
Online retail advertising is also gaining momentum, and Statista’s data suggests that these platforms now account for close to a quarter (23.7 percent) of total digital ad spend.
Online retail media is an “aggregate” category in Statista’s dataset, so it’s important to highlight that this figure includes a portion of the spend that is also attributed to channels like online search and banner advertising.
But regardless of where we account for it, the net outcome remains the same: marketers are on track to spend a combined total of USD $204 billion on ads on online retail platforms in 2025, which is considerably more than the USD $146 billion they’ll spend on traditional TV advertising.
And spending on online retail advertising has enjoyed impressive growth over recent months too, with Statista projecting year-on-year growth of 22 percent in absolute spend for 2025.
The state of online search
But seeing as it accounts for the single largest share of global ad spend, let’s return our attention to online search.
For upfront context, some of the most important trends in digital today relate to people’s changing search habits, and these evolving behaviours have particular relevance to marketers.
Reassuringly, our analysis suggests that mainstream media headlines tend to exaggerate and distort what’s really going on.
However, it’s important to highlight that there are some concerning trends in the data.
Use of search engines declines
Firstly, the share of online adults who say that they used a search engine at least once within the past month continues to fall.
In the latest wave of GWI’s ongoing research, just 80.3 percent of online adults said that they used a search engine like Google or Yahoo! within the past month, which is the lowest figure we’ve seen for this question and its previous equivalents in GWI’s survey.
It’s important to stress that the percentage of online adults declaring usage of search engines had already started to decline before Q4 2022, so it’s unlikely that ChatGPT and its ilk are the only cause of this decline.
And in fact, respondents’ reported use of search engines actually increased steadily between Q4 2022 and Q2 2024.
Regardless of the cause, however, GWI’s survey data shows that the share of online adults that visit search engines each month has fallen by a relative 2.5 percent (-210 basis points) over the past twelve months.
Changes in search referrals
Given these trends, it’s well worth exploring behavioural data too.
For initial perspective, data from Statcounter suggests that Google still accounts for close to 90 percent of all search engine referrals to third-party websites.
However, time series data also reveals that Google’s overall share of search referrals has edged downwards over the past few years, and now sits at one of the lowest levels we’ve seen during the past decade.
These figures alone don’t tell the whole story though, and this decline in referrals may not necessarily be the result of reduced use of Google.
As we concluded at the end of a detailed analysis in last quarter’s report:
“The apparent decline in referral traffic revealed in Statcounter’s data suggests that Google is simply converting fewer searches into referrals… [D]espite its search ads division accounting for close to two-thirds of Alphabet’s total revenue, Google appears to be proactively reducing the volume of traffic that its search properties send to third-party websites.”
Changes in Google traffic
So, despite recent trends, Google still accounts for roughly 90 percent of search activity, and it’s therefore still the best barometer of overall search engine use.
And at first glance, data from Similarweb appears to suggest that total weekly traffic to google.com has remained remarkably consistent over the past two years, apart from the expected seasonal dips during the last week of each year.
However, Kepios’s analysis of rolling, 8-week averages indicates that Google’s total site visits have actually declined by somewhere between 1 and 2 percent over the past 2 years.
Admittedly, that’s not a dramatic decline, but it does reinforce the conclusion that people may be reducing their reliance on search engines (even if the decline in traffic to google.com may simply be symptomatic of overall declines in web use).
And critically, the average number of unique monthly visitors to google.com has also seen a steady decline over the past couple of years, which suggests that marketers can now reach fewer people via web-based search engines than they could this time last year.
Having said that, Google’s unique monthly user average has actually rebounded somewhat over the past six months though, so there’s potentially more to this trend than first meets the eye.
And in fact, despite alarmist media headlines – and more legitimate concern over audiences’ evolving behaviours – Similarweb’s unique visitor data indicates that the decline in Google’s unique visitor traffic is also only in the order of 1 to 2 percent per year.
Search is still the engine
But with online search ad spend set to reach USD $352 billion in 2025, changes of 1 to 2 percent still equate to billions of dollars in marketing investment.
So, should marketers be looking for alternatives to online search in 2026?
In order to answer that question, it’s important to understand evolving search engine use in context.
First and foremost, GWI’s research indicates that search engines remain the number one source of brand discovery for the world’s online adults, with nearly 1 in 3 internet users aged 16 and above saying that they learn about new products and services through platforms like Google and Bing.
And furthermore, search engines are also the primary destination for internet users when they’re researching potential purchases.
Consequently, search engines still play a critically important role in today’s marketing mix, and – despite recent trends – our analysis indicates that this should remain the case in 2026, and well into the foreseeable future too.
So, while marketers will certainly want to keep their eye on search trends, I’d contend that the pace of change isn’t yet sufficient to merit any meaningful reallocation of budgets away from search.
▶ Dive deeper: Trying to understand whether AI will replace search engines? This comprehensive analysis offers valuable data and perspectives.
The world’s top social platforms
Turning our attention to another of 2025’s top ad media, the latest research from GWI reveals that online adults now use an average of 6.75 different social media platforms each month.
That Q2 2025 average is actually down slightly compared with the recent high of 6.86 platforms that we saw in GWI’s Q4 2024 wave of research, but the current figure broadly matches the averages for Q2 2024 and Q2 2023, so recent declines may simply be the result of regular, seasonal patterns.
However, as we’ll see below, data shows that the mix of platforms that we see in people’s “social media repertoire” continues to evolve.
Moreover, the platform that comes out top of the social media rankings can vary meaningfully, depending on which metric we prioritise.
Top social platform by self-declared use
At a worldwide level, GWI’s data suggests that Facebook currently has the largest audience of online adults aged 16 and above, with 56.9 percent of respondents in the Q2 2025 survey saying that they used the platform at least once within the previous 30 days.
However, YouTube does not appear in the same part of GWI’s survey as all the other platforms, because GWI treats YouTube as a video platform rather than as a social platform.
As a result, figures for YouTube may not be directly comparable with those for other platforms in this ranking.
And given that 55.4 percent of GWI’s respondents say that they use YouTube each month – just 1.5 percentage points lower than Facebook – there’s a possibility that YouTube might actually rank higher than Facebook were the video platform to appear within the same list of answer options in GWI’s survey.
Meanwhile, Instagram ranks third in GWI’s survey data, with 55.1 percent of online adults saying that they used the platform within the past month.
Meta stablemate WhatsApp ranks fourth with 54 percent, while Messenger ranks fifth, at 38.4 percent.
For reference, TikTok ranks sixth with 36 percent, but it’s important to highlight that we’ve removed the data for China from GWI’s global TikTok figure, because the “TikTok” option in GWI’s survey in China actually references “Douyin”, which Bytedance operates as a separate platform.
And the rest of this ranking makes for interesting reading too, especially with regards to the popularity of Pinterest, and the enduring appeal of X (the platform formerly known as Twitter).
Demographic variations
However, that overall ranking can be something of a distraction for marketers, because platform adoption rates vary meaningfully by age.
For example, GWI’s data indicates that users aged 65 and above are the most likely to use Facebook, even if – contrary to popular media stereotypes – the platform appears to be consistently popular across all other age groups too.
Meanwhile, Pinterest is significantly more popular amongst female internet users aged 16 to 24 than it is amongst any other demographic, which may make the pinboard platform a particularly appealing option for brands hoping to reach and engage younger women
Conversely, the biggest share figures in Reddit’s audience profile align with male users aged 16 to 34, suggesting that the community platform may be a compelling choice for brands hoping to reach and engage younger men.
Most used social media apps
But if we turn our attention to the social media apps that people actually open on their mobile handsets – rather than focusing on what survey respondents they say they do – a somewhat different story emerges.
Indeed, Similarweb’s latest App Intelligence data indicates that YouTube is the clear leader when it comes to active users of the world’s top social media apps.
Note that the figures on this chart represent indices, which compare the active user numbers of each platform with the active user number of the top-ranked platform (and as a result, the top platform will always have an index value of 100).
WhatsApp ranks second in this dataset with an index of 86.5, but this WhatsApp figure indicates that YouTube’s active app user base is more than 15 percent larger than that of its next nearest rival.
Instagram places third in our Similarweb social app ranking with an index score of 79.9, while Facebook only ranks fourth, with a score of 77.1.
TikTok places fifth in this ranking by worldwide active users of platforms’ mobile apps, but it’s worth highlighting that Similarweb’s data indicates that YouTube has almost 50 percent more monthly active app users than TikTok does.
And it’s also interesting to note that Snapchat performs markedly better in this dataset than it does in GWI’s survey, with Similarweb’s app tracking data placing Snapchat ahead of Telegram, Pinterest, and X.
The world’s favourite social media platform
User numbers can be a bit of a “blunt instrument” when evaluating social media usage though, so let’s turn our attention to a different kind of metric: user sentiment.
GWI’s survey includes a question that asks respondents to identify their “favourite” social media platform, and this dataset provides yet another perspective on the “top” social platforms.
However, before we begin our analysis, please note that YouTube doesn’t appear as an answer option for this question in GWI’s survey, so it won’t appear in these rankings.
At a worldwide level, social media users aged 16 and above are most likely to identify WhatsApp as their “favourite” social media platform, with 17.4 percent of respondents – 1 in 6 – identifying Meta’s largest messaging platform as their preferred option.
Instagram ranks second with 16.4 percent of the vote, while Facebook completes Meta’s dominance of the top 3 spots, with 13 percent of respondents selecting this option.
Interestingly, WeChat ranks fourth, but it’s important to stress that a whopping 99 percent of the respondents who selected this option live in China, so it’s perhaps more representative to say that 微信 – or “Weixin”, as the platform is known in China – ranks fourth.
And TikTok rounds out the top five, with 9.1 percent of global respondents identifying the short video platform as their favourite social medium.
For added perspective, 1 in 3 adult social media users chose one of the top two options (i.e. WhatsApp or Instagram), while the top five platforms accounted for more than two-thirds (67.3 percent) of the total vote.
More demographic divergence
However, it’s interesting to note that platform sentiment varies meaningfully by age.
For example, Instagram is the clear favourite amongst social media users between the ages of 16 and 34, and WhatsApp only tops the charts once users pass the age of 35.
It’s also interesting to note that women are significantly more likely to select TikTok as their favourite platform than men are, while – perhaps surprisingly – men are more likely than women to identify Facebook as their favourite platform.
People use social media on most days
Looking beyond specific platforms, most of the world’s connected adults use social media at least once every two days, with GWI’s latest research showing that – on average – online adults use social media on 4.21 days each week.
Moreover, GWI’s research indicates that people in just five of the world’s largest economies – France, Germany, Czechia, South Korea, and Japan – use social media less than once every two days.
In contrast, people in 11 countries out of the 54 covered by GWI’s survey indicate that they use social media on at least 5 days each week, with Nigerians saying that they use social media on 5.84 days out of every 7.
As stereotypes might lead us to expect, younger people are the most frequent users of social media, with respondents aged 16 to 24 telling GWI that they use social media on an average of 4.6 days each week.
Conversely, retirees exhibit the lowest frequency of social media use, with men aged 65 and above saying that they use social media on an average of just 2.81 days per week.
However, all other age groups see averages in excess of 3.5 days per week, indicating that – on average – internet users below the age of 65 tend to use social media at least once every two days.
Feeding time
Meanwhile, GWI’s data also indicates that online adults spend an average of more than 1 hour per day browsing social networks like Facebook and X.
Moreover, if we add video-centric platforms like YouTube and TikTok into this mix, daily average consumption jumps to well over 2½ hours per day, resulting in a weekly average of 18 hours and 36 minutes per user.
And what’s more, amongst younger users, average social media consumption is even higher.
GWI’s data indicates that women aged 16 to 24 spend an average of 25 hours and 45 minutes per week scrolling social and video feeds, which equates to an average of more than 3 hours and 40 minutes each day.
However, even retirees spend a meaningful amount of time scrolling social and video feeds, with the latest research indicating that male internet users over the age of 65 still spend an average of more than an hour each day engaging in these activities.
For perspective, if the typical adult in the world’s largest economies sleeps for between 7 and 8 hours per night, these figures suggest that – on average – women aged 16 to 24 spend roughly 22 percent of their waking lives scrolling feeds.
But even that global average of 18 hours and 36 minutes per week equates to a sizeable chunk of our lives, with the typical online adult now spending roughly 16 percent of their waking hours scrolling social and video feeds.
And to put these figures into broader perspective, our analysis of the latest GWI data indicates that the typical online adult now spends roughly 33½ hours per week consuming all types of online media (including streaming TV), which suggests that social and video feeds now account for more than half of our connected activities.
And just in case you’re wondering, that overall figure suggests that internet users now spend roughly 29 percent of their waking lives consuming online media.
Time per platform
As we saw earlier, however, social media platforms aren’t all created equal.
So which specific platforms claim the greatest share of the world’s social media activities?
Well, if we add up all the time spent by each app’s Android users in August 2025, Similarweb’s App Intelligence data reveals a clear “winner”, with YouTube accounting for well over 50 percent more total time than its next nearest rival, WhatsApp, which has an index of 63.7.
Facebook places third in this ranking, but Similarweb’s data suggests that Facebook users spend just 62.3 percent of the time using the platform’s Android app that YouTube’s users spend using YouTube’s Android app.
Instagram ranks fourth with an index score of 56.0, and TikTok rounds out the top five, with an index of 55.1.
And just for perspective, these figures suggest that – added up across each app’s active Android user base – YouTube accounted for almost twice as much total time as TikTok did in August 2025.
Share of total time drops sharply beyond the top five though, with sixth-placed Telegram accounting for barely one-tenth of the total time that app users spend using YouTube.
Average time per user
The ranking we saw in the previous section was based on the cumulative time spent by all of an app’s users, but the rankings look a little different for the average time spent by each individual user.
Indeed, Similarweb’s App Intelligence data shows that the typical TikTok user spends 1 hour and 37 minutes per day using the platform’s Android app, which is roughly 14 percent longer than the typical YouTube user spends using the YouTube Android app.
Instagram ranks third, with users spending an average of 1 hour and 13 minutes per day using the platform’s Android app, while fourth-ranked Facebook is the last of the top platforms to capture an average of more than one hour per day (67 minutes).
WhatsApp ranks fifth, with the messaging platform’s users spending an average of 59 minutes per day using the WhatsApp Android app.
Daily sessions
However, it’s interesting to note here that WhatsApp sees by far the greatest number of daily sessions amongst these top social apps.
More specifically, Similarweb’s data indicates that the typical WhatsApp Android user opens the platform’s app more than 20 times per day, which is almost 70 percent more frequently than second-ranked Instagram.
Meanwhile, TikTok enjoys the third-highest figure for daily sessions, with users opening the platform’s Android app an average of 10 times per day.
The average for YouTube is considerably lower though, with Similarweb’s data indicating that the typical YouTube user opens the platform’s Android app just 5.9 times per day.
Longest social sessions
And the quirks across these different metrics mean that YouTube actually enjoys the longest average session time amongst these top social apps.
Similarweb’s data indicates that each individual YouTube Android app session lasted an average of 14 minutes and 29 seconds in August 2025, which was roughly 50 percent longer than the duration of the typical TikTok session, which lasted 9 minutes and 42 seconds.
Facebook enjoys the third-longest average session time at 7 minutes and 17 seconds, while video-centric chat app Imo ranks fourth, with an average session length of 6 minutes and 52 seconds.
Instagram only places fifth in this particular ranking though, with the platform’s Android users averaging 5 minutes and 56 seconds per session.
Changing social media expectations
Considering that the world spends so much time using social media – and that we use such a wide variety of different platforms – it’s perhaps unsurprising to learn that people are turning to social media platforms for an ever greater range of activities.
Indeed, the latest research from GWI shows that social media users cite an average of 4.69 distinct reasons for using social platforms.
That average has continued to edge up over the past two years, indicating that people expect an ever greater array of “benefits” from their social media time.
Globally, “keeping in touch with friends and family” remains the top motivation for accessing social platforms, with more than half (50.2 percent) of adult social media users around the world citing this as a primary reason for using social media.
However, it’s interesting to note that “filling spare time” ranks second (39.7 percent), which may help to explain the continuing rise in popularity of video-centric platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
Just as an aside here, it can be easy to conflate “filling spare time” with “wasting time”, but in many cases, “filling spare time” might equate to making better use of otherwise “dead” time.
For example, in many parts of the world, people spend a significant amount of time each day on public transport, and social media feeds can offer a welcome distraction from the tedium of an arduous commute.
Meanwhile, “reading news stories” continues to rank third amongst top motivations for using social media, with more than 1 in 3 active social media users (35.4 percent) citing this as a primary social media activity.
Using social media for news is considerably more popular in some parts of the world though, with more than two-thirds of Moroccan social media users saying that reading news stories is one of their top motivations for using social platforms.
And it’s also interesting to note that the relative importance of news tends to increase with age.
GWI’s data indicates that “reading news” stories ranks just fifth amongst the primary social media motivations of users aged 16 to 24, but it ranks second for all age groups over the age of 45.
Having said that thought, it’s worth highlighting that “keeping in touch with friends and family” takes the top spot across all age groups in GWI’s survey.
The evolution of TV
Turning our attention to bigger screens, GWI’s latest data indicates that 31.6 percent of online adults used a connected TV (CTV) device to access digital content at least once over the past 30 days, with that figure now well ahead of the figure for tablet devices (28.0 percent).
It’s interesting to note that there’s no obvious “pattern” to the countries where accessing internet content on a TV is more (or less) popular, with the data offering no clear correlation with factors such as economic development, geographic region, or even median age.
GWI’s data does indicate that younger generations are less likely to use CTVs to access digital content though, and fewer than 4 in 10 internet users aged 16 to 24 (39.6 percent) own a “smart” TV today, which is well below the overall overage of 49.3 percent.
Conversely, older generations appear to have embraced smart TVs, with retirees currently the most likely to say they own one of these devices, at 55.1 percent.
Not all of these device owners use their smart TVs to access digital content directly though, and GWI’s data indicates that it’s actually the 35 to 44 year old age group where we see the highest incidence of accessing digital content directly on CTVs.
Living the stream
But while the data show that fewer than 1 in 3 online adults access digital content directly via their TVs, there’s strong evidence to indicate that digital access channels have fundamentally changed TV viewing behaviours all over the world.
And one area where this is clearly visible is in the consumption of streaming video and TV platforms.
GWI’s research shows that 91.7 percent of online adults consume some form of streaming TV content each month, while 94.6 percent watched some kind of online video in the past 30 days.
For clarity though, it’s important to note that this consumption may take place on various devices, including smartphones.
Moreover, if we switch our focus to weekly online activities (as opposed to monthly), online video actually tops GWI’s ranking for regular media use, with 91.1 percent of adult internet users saying that they spent at least some time watching online video content over the past seven days.
Having said that, a greater number of the world’s connected adults still watch “traditional” TV each week (73.5 percent) than watch streaming TV platforms (69.9 percent).
However, despite the greater prevalence of watching broadcast and linear TV, the data also show that ‘OTT’ streaming services now account for more than half of internet users’ total TV watch time (50.4 percent).
And furthermore, as we see so often in these datasets, behaviours and trends vary meaningfully by audience demographic and by geography.
For example, marketers may be particularly interested to note that in the United States – the world’s largest TV advertising market – streaming now accounts for almost 6 in every 10 of the minutes spent watching any kind of TV, at 59.4 percent of the combined total.
Big screen, big opportunity
Meanwhile, data profiling the mix of platforms and channels that capture the greatest share of Americans’ TV viewing activity offer some even more interesting findings.
For example, data from Nielsen shows that YouTube now claims the single greatest share of TV usage in the United States, accounting for 13.1 percent of America’s total TV viewing time in August 2025.
And moreover, YouTube’s share of US TV time has increased by almost a quarter over the past year, from 10.6 percent in August 2024 when it ranked second, to today’s rank-topping figure.
Meanwhile, Disney claims second place in the August 2025 ranking, capturing 9.7 percent of America’s total TV viewing time, while Netflix takes third place, with 8.7 percent.
However, Nielsen’s data suggests that “OTT” content – streaming and online video – only accounts for 42.4 percent of ad-supported TV in the United States, with broadcast and cable still accounting for the lion’s share of the ad-supported category.
And for added context, non-ad-supported TV accounted for just over a quarter – 27.6 percent – of total TV time in Q1 2025.
ConnecTube
But looking more closely at the top-ranked “channel”, it’s clear that connected TV is increasingly important for YouTube, both in terms of watch time and advertising opportunities.
Indeed, at a worldwide level, YouTube’s own ad reach data indicates that its CTV ad formats now reach more than 4 in 10 users each month.
For comparison, that’s only just below the figure for laptops and desktops (42.2 percent), and it’s significantly higher than the figure for tablets (24.0 percent).
However, YouTube’s CTV reach is even higher in many of its most valuable markets, and the latest data indicates that marketers could reach 84.6 percent of YouTube’s total audience in the United States with CTV ads.
Meanwhile, CTV formats reach more than half of YouTube’s total audience in 22 distinct countries [note: not all of these countries are shown in the graphic below].
As a result, CTV advertising may be becoming more compelling for marketers, as Nielsen asserted in a recent article:
“[CTV] presents a significant opportunity for marketers. …[A] substantial 56 percent of marketers globally report planning to increase their spending on CTV in 2025, representing a slight uptick from 53 percent in 2024.”
Looking ahead: digital success in 2026
The data we’ve seen so far offer rich insights into digital behaviours and marketing opportunities today, but what might the year ahead look like?
Well, our trusty crystal ball suggests that many of the “digital trends” reports you’ll read over the next few weeks will offer effervescent predictions relating to cutting-edge tech.
Here are a few of the topics you can expect to find in those reports, together with my take on why these predictions are largely irrelevant for marketers:
AI automation: yes, it may be coming, but it’s not ready yet, and letting AI control your 2026 marketing plan would almost certainly result in disaster.
Agentic marketing: let’s revisit this one when more than 1 percent of your brand’s consumers have outsourced their grocery shopping to bots.
Edge-first infrastructure: if you had to Google it, you can safely forget about it for another year.
Context-aware experiences: we’re supposed to prioritise “devices that adapt to their environment in real time”, when we haven’t even mastered contextual ad targeting?
Immersive computing: sure, predict it every year – albeit with slightly different names – and eventually it might come true [ahem].
Post-quantum cybersecurity: erm… let’s leave this one to the experts, shall we?
Realistically, none of these things will be the secret to your marketing success next year.
So, rather than add to your to-do list, here are my three tips for cutting through the noise and focusing on what really matters in 2026.
Beware the AI hype machine
Yes, it’s vitally important for marketers to keep track of digital trends.
But marketing isn’t the same as venture capital investing; our job as marketers is not to predict the future.
Rather, our primary task is to identify the most efficient and effective ways to reach and engage existing audiences.
And even if you’re building a full-year plan for 2026, it’s unlikely that you’ll go far wrong if you build it based on today’s digital behaviours.
Yes, our audiences’ use of AI may evolve rapidly over the coming months, but the data you’ll find in our Digital 2026 reports should be more than sufficient to help you understand whether LLMs should be a part of your 2026 media mix.
But even if the answer is “yes”, the activities that can help marketers succeed in LLMs should seem eerily familiar:
Update your website: Publish content that you’d like to feature in AI summaries about your brand, and ensure that AI bots can access it. This is very similar to conventional SEO, but with greater emphasis on overall meaning (as opposed to specific keywords). Note that text content should be more than sufficient, so you don’t need to go all out on video content or dynamic web experiences.
Inspire conversations: Use marketing to inspire third-party conversations on social media platforms, especially on forums like Reddit. This approach has been part of the social media playbook for at least a decade, so there’s nothing new here either.
Drive mentions: Look for opportunities to build third-party references to your brand in authoritative media – just as you do in traditional PR.
Buy ads: as they become available on LLMs, you might consider buying AI ad placements in exactly the same way you’d buy social, search, and display ads.
In other words, success in LLMs doesn’t require rocket science: while AI may seem like “the future”, you already have most of the skills you need to take advantage of current opportunities.
Mix to max
GWI’s survey findings clearly demonstrate that no single channel has the potential to deliver even one-third of our campaign objectives.
For example, when respondents identify the channels that introduce them to new brands, products, and services, fewer than 1 in 3 select the most common answer.
Moreover, GWI’s data suggests that even if you use a mix of the the top three channels for awareness – search engines, TV ads, and social media ads – you’d still only have the potential to introduce your brand to 62.2 percent of the world’s online adults.
And as a result, marketers still need to harness a mix of channels – ideally including online and offline media – in order to maximise their chances of success.
However, it’s also important to stress that this finding does not mean that you need to try and use every channel out there.
For example, when it comes to social media, GWI’s data shows that a presence on two or three of the top platforms already offers you the chance to reach 9 in 10 social media users, and that should be more than sufficient for any brand’s needs.
As you might expect though, this means that “the usual suspects” are often the most obvious, and that brings me neatly to the last of my tips.
Love the one you’re with
It’s high time for marketers to stop obsessing over the “next big thing”.
There’s a good reason why TV ads still rank second as a source of brand awareness amongst the world’s billions of online adults.
Similarly, despite its immense popularity, TikTok hasn’t usurped Instagram or YouTube; it’s simply joined them on users’ smartphone homescreens.
Indeed, one of the things I’ve seen time and again during the 25+ years I’ve been studying digital trends is that behaviours are not binary.
Yes, some platforms may enjoy a meteoric rise in popularity, and as a result, they “steal” time and attention from other activities
However, I can’t recall a single example of a new platform that has replaced an existing favourite overnight.
And that’s because new additions to our “digital repertoire” are incremental: we may embrace them, but we invariably continue to use old favourites too.
Take Yahoo!, which still attracts more than 400 million unique monthly users across its .com and .co.jp domains, more than 30 years after its launch.
To be clear though, I’m not saying that marketing mixes shouldn’t evolve.
On the contrary, I’m fully in favour of regular reviews to ensure that we maximise returns on marketing investment.
However, we shouldn’t be surprised if the opportunities that we identify in this year’s review are exactly the same as the opportunities that we identified in last year’s review.
And that’s because – critically – a marketer’s job is not to deliver novelty; it’s to deliver results.
In other words, you’re looking for efficiency and effectiveness – not effervescence.
So, if your company’s “powers that be” are still asking you why you’re not jumping on shiny bandwagons espoused by dubious marketing “gurus”, please send them my way, and I’ll be happy to set them right.
Digging deeper into Digital 2026 data
That’s (almost) all for this analysis, but if you’re still hungry for insights, remember that you can explore specific sections of this year’s reports in even more detail via our deep-dive articles:
Deep dive 1 explores trends in the global population
Deep dive 2 takes a closer look at global internet connectivity, including device trends
Deep dive 3 brings together our complete analysis of the latest social media trends
Deep dive 4 offers a comprehensive study of AI adoption and use
Meanwhile, don’t forget that we’ll be back on your screens in just a few weeks, bringing you the first of our Digital 2026 local country reports.
You’ll find each of those reports as soon as they’re ready in our DataReportal library, together with all of our Global Digital Reports from the past 14 years – and all for free!
In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss any of this year’s findings, or if you’d like to stay up to date with my regular analyses and updates, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn – I’d love to hear from you.
But just before you go…
And finally…
What, you thought I’d forgotten about our most controversial Global Digital dataset?
Fear not, dear reader; here’s my comprehensive analysis of who’s really winning the internet at the end of 2025.
Challenging conventions
Let’s start with some impawtant context.
If you visit any of the more “interactive” corners of the internet, it won’t be long before you encounter somebody who confidently informs you that the internet was in fact invented for cats.
However, being the dogged datanauts that we are, we can’t merely take such assertions for granted, so we’ve gone deep into the numbers to sniff out the real truth.
Be warned though: the following findings may make for uncomfortable reading.
Artificial in-tail-igence
Like all good researchers [ahem], the first thing we checked was AI.
And despite increasing concerns that AI tools pander to users’ existing outlook, Google’s AI Overview quickly refuted this most fundamental of internet creeds with a blunt – and frankly scandalous – counterclaim:
“While it’s a popular internet meme and a common saying, the internet was not actually invented for cats. The internet was developed for various reasons, including scientific research and communication, long before cat videos became popular.”
Gasp!
Could there be any truth in such heresy, or is it all merely scurrilous hallucination?
Unconvinced, I sought out some alternative facts.
And reassuringly, in response to the prompt, “was the internet invented for cats?”, ChatGPT offered a more measured pawspective:
“Not officially — but if you judged by the sheer volume of cat videos, memes, and GIFs online, you could be forgiven for thinking so.”
Those two opening words may raise concern, but attentive readers will note the astute use of an authoritative em-dash, which should offer some degree of confidence in the affirmation that follows.
Somewhat bizarrely, ChatGPT’s answer then went off on into a weird diatribe about science and blah, before suddenly redeeming itself with a compelling conclusion – and a veracity-affirming emoji:
“In other words: [the internet] was invented for scientists, but perfected for cats. 🐱”
Meanwhile, the ineffable Claude offered a similar opening salvo for the same prompt:
“No, the internet wasn’t invented for cats, though they’ve certainly become one of its most beloved features!”
But despite its conclusive exclamation mark, Claude’s answer then veered off into another full-on Boomer story referencing ARPANET and decentralisation blah, before suddenly redeeming itself with the following insight:
“However, cats have undeniably become internet royalty. From the early days of cat memes and LOLcats in the 2000s to viral sensations like Grumpy Cat and keyboard cat, felines have dominated online culture in a way that nobody could have predicted. There’s even a joke that the internet is essentially “a cat delivery system”. So while the internet’s origins were decidedly more serious and technical, cats have certainly made it their domain in the most delightful way possible.”
So there we have it: the totality of human knowledge and the irrefutable wisdom of AI concludes that cats may indeed have co-opted the internet.
But can we really rely on these AI answers, or could such tools pawsibly be barking up the wrong tree?
Let’s take a clawser look.
Fuzzy logic
As you’ve probably come to expect by now, the latest reputable data tells a more nuanced story.
First up, Google search informs us that the worldwide web is now home to 4.44 billion pages about cats, which equates to more than 7 pages for each of the cats on Earth today.
And for added purrspective, that 4.44 billion figure is a full 20 percent higher than the 3.67 billion web pages about dogs.
However, these figures don’t seem to align with internet users’ actual interests.
Indeed, Google Trends data suggests that – over the past 12 months – people around the world were significantly more likely to search for dogs than they were to search for cats.
More specifically, Google’s huge dataset reveals that the Google search volume index for Dog (as a broad search topic) averaged 89 between July 2024 to June 2025, as compared with an average index of just 55 for Cat.
And that means people were more than 60 percent more likely to search for dogs than cats.
Interestingly, these contradictory data points suggest that web publishers haven’t aligned their content with users’ actual interests and behaviours.
Weird huh?
Purrhaps it’s part of a long-tail keyword strategy.
Wikitty
But in another twist, data from Wikipedia indicates that its particular users are meaningfully more likely to seek out information about cats than they are to seek out coverage about their canine counterparts.
In the 12 months between July 2024 and June 2025, the Wikipedia English page about cats was viewed 3.68 million times, which is 45 percent more than the 2.54 million views garnered by the equivalent page about dogs.
Meanwhile, the Wikimedia foundation’s data suggests that – across all languages – annual views for pages about cats outnumbered views for pages about dogs by 8.65 million to 5.59 million (respectively).
This means that – despite a greater number of Google searches for content about dogs – people are considerably more likely to read Wikipedia articles about cats.
That’s purrfectly plausible… but if they’re not clicking through to Wikipedia, where do all those dog searches end up?
Social animals
Well, the answer to that purrticular question may lie in the latest social media trends.
And intriguingly, Kepios’s analysis indicates that dogs still dominate most of the world’s top social platforms.
For example, users have pup-lished an all-time total of 394 million posts tagged with #dog to Instagram, compared to 307 million for #cat.
That means Instagram is home to 28 percent more #dog posts than #cat posts.
The gap is far smaller over on TikTok though, where the 913 billion all-time views for posts tagged with #dog are only 0.16 percent greater than the 911 billion all-time views for posts tagged with #cat.
However, dogs are a considerably more pup-ular subject for TikTok posts, with users publishing an all-time total of 76 million posts to the platform tagged with #dog, compared with just 64 million posts tagged with #cat.
And canines are clearly still top dogs over on X, too: the platform’s advertising tools indicate that 219 million X users are “interested” in dogs, compared with just 39 million who are interested in cats.
That seems like a pretty cat-astrophic result for felines, but there’s better news over on Reddit, where cats enjoy a dramatic reversal of furtunes.
Indeed, at the time of writing, the platform’s r/cats community is home to 8.6 million “Cat Lovers”, which is a full three times greater than the 2.8 million “Dog People” who’ve joined r/dogs.
That’s a rather furmidable achievement.
Making sense of the numbers
So what do all of this year’s numbers tell us about who’s really winning the internet?
Well, with so many different data points telling wildly different stories, I had to defer to the VAR – our video assistant rufferee – for final adjudication.
And – after an unusually long paws – the verdict it returned seems to concur with those AI summaries we saw earlier: cats are indeed top of the internet at the end of 2025, albeit only by a whisker.
At first I thought the VAR was just kitten, but it seems the judge’s decision is final.
Let’s hope 2026 will #BeMoreDog.
Disclosure: Simon Kemp is a brand ambassador for GWI.
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