As the festive season commences and we prepare to welcome a brand-new year ahead, it’s the perfect moment to pause and celebrate the milestones that shaped not only us but our members and the wider digital ecosystem this year. It’s been filled with collaboration, innovation, and collective achievements, and we are delighted to share some of the highlights made possible by our incredible community.
A heartfelt thank you to all of our members and partners for your continued support, ideas and passion shared. 2025 wouldn’t have been the same without you!
So grab a cosy drink and join us as we revisit the year’s brightest and best moments:
From returning to our home roots in Brussels with two flagship in-person conferences, to launching our first-ever Retail Media Impact Summitin Amsterdam, 2025 has been a landmark year for our events. Alongside these new standout moments, our hybrid and virtual series - including the Great Debates and our ever-popular Virtual Programmatic Days - kept the conversation lively and the industry inspired throughout 2025.
Below, we’ve highlighted some of the year’s most popular events. To watch our events on demand, simply visit our Knowledge Hub and select “Watch on Demand” in the side menu.
We kicked off the year in Brussels with Advertising Horizons 2025, a brand-new policy-focused event that brought together European industry leaders, innovators, and policymakers. Across a day of sharp analysis and forward-looking discussion, attendees explored the evolving regulatory landscape and the policies shaping the future of digital advertising.
Watch the Recap Video here. For a deeper dive into the main takeaways from our standout sessions, check out our blog post here.
As the year gained momentum, we once again gathered in Brussels for our annual flagship conference, Interact 2025. Under the theme 'Digital Skylight - Clarity and Purpose for 2025 and Beyond, ' participants tackled and found solutions to the major questions facing our industry today. Conversations explored the economic, technological, and societal changes currently reshaping the digital ecosystem.
Read our wrap-up blog here to see what the two days featured! You can also watch the full wrap-up video here!
2025 saw the triumphant launch of our first Retail Media Impact Summit, a landmark event spotlighting one of digital advertising’s fastest-growing sectors. The one-day summit brought top retailers, advertisers, and technology partners together in Amsterdam for inspiring keynotes, collaborative workshops, and expert-led discussions, setting a new standard for leadership and innovation in Retail Media across Europe.
Read our wrap-up blog here and watch the full wrap-up video here!
You can also listen to our Retail Media Roundtable podcast series, recorded live at the event, here.
Our Virtual Programmatic Day (VPD) remains one of our most popular events, bringing together industry leaders to explore the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in programmatic trading across Europe.
Thanks to Rakuten TV Enterprise for hosting us, the H1 edition took place in London, offering a successful hybrid experience. The sessions covered critical industry topics focused on the state of programmatic, the growth of omnichannel media, and how to measure attention effectively.
Check out the session recordings and highlights from our H1 event here.
For H2, the event returned online, featuring panels on programmatic innovation, AI, and building trust and transparency across channels. Both editions were a resounding success, sparking fresh insights, lively discussions, and valuable connections across the programmatic community.
Check out the session recordings and highlights from our H2 event here.
Our Great Debate series of events brings industry experts together to discuss and debate the industry’s hottest topics of the moment.
Check out our Great Debate event recordings and highlights below:
As well as our main events, we also hosted several bespoke events and webinars on critical topics, including Connected TV (CTV), Trends in Advertising, Data Privacy and Optimisation, AI and others. Check out some of them below:
Research is at the heart of what we do. This year, our work has helped us to uncover trends, benchmark performance, and navigate the fast-changing world of digital advertising.
From groundbreaking insights to thought-provoking industry attitudes, these are our top five research highlights from 2025:
All of our guides are created with the help and expertise of our industry committee members. Check out some of our top trending pieces below:
This year saw the launch of our brand new Advertising & Media Committee, which serves as a central forum for collaboration, uniting industry leaders to tackle the most pressing commercial and technological trends in European digital advertising and media.
Divided into four specialised sub-groups: Addressability & Measurement, AI in Advertising, CTV and Programmatic, we have been actively driving initiatives to support the growth and innovation of the European digital advertising and media ecosystem.
Here are just some of the key outputs produced by the Working Groups this year:
Wayne Tassie, Group Director, NL at DoubleVerify & Chair of IAB Europe’s Advertising & Media Committee
"This year marked the inaugural launch of IAB Europe’s Advertising and Media Committee (AMC), which I have the privilege of chairing. The AMC brings together senior leaders and subject matter specialists from across our membership to focus on the issues shaping the industry today. Through four dedicated working groups spanning AI and Advertising, CTV, Addressability and Measurement, and Programmatic, member collaboration has played a critical role in advancing practical thinking, accelerating innovation, and shaping a clear, pan-European narrative. The strength of engagement reflects both the pace of change facing our industry and a shared commitment to ensuring it evolves in a responsible, effective, and future-focused way."
In collaboration with our Retail & Commerce Media Committee, we have been actively advancing our initiatives to educate, guide, and harmonise the Retail Media landscape in Europe, with a particular focus on developing standards. Here are some of the outputs produced by the committee this year:
You can explore all of this great content and more on our Retail Media Hub.
Jason Wescott, Global Head of Commerce Solutions at WPP Media and Chair of our Retail & Commerce Media Committee
“This year, IAB Europe’s Retail & Commerce Media Committee brought together senior leaders across retail, AdTech and agencies to deliver incisive thought leadership and practical resources, blogs, podcasts, guidelines, and insights. Whilst I’m mostly proud of the inclusive culture we’ve fostered in the committee, where every voice and opinion is valued and encouraged, we have delivered tangible outputs on a scale punching well above our weight.
Highlights include our first Retail Media Impact Summit in Amsterdam with 150+ experts in an interactive, impact‑focused event; the Attitudes to Retail Media report becoming a widely quoted industry reference; and turning Retail Media Standards into a Certification Programme advertisers can trust, with Albert Heijn as our first certified retailer in the Netherlands. I’m excited for 2026: an even stronger follow‑up summit, expanding our thought-leadership to programmatic Retail Media, AI, data clean rooms, and non‑endemic opportunities, and an accelerated certification rollout to build critical mass across Europe by 2028.”
Through the work of our Sustainability Standards Committee, we have continued to advance initiatives aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of digital advertising in 2025. Below are the new tools and key outputs we’ve developed to support this work, alongside our critical contributions to the latest version of the Ad Net Zero Global Media Sustainability Framework.
You can explore more of this great work and valuable resources on our Sustainability Hub.
Steffen Hubert, Director of External Affairs & Sustainability, Seven.One Entertainment Group & Chair of IAB Europe's Sustainability Standards Committee, representing BVDW
“I’m proud of what we achieved in 2025. We further refined and strengthened how digital advertising can measure and reduce emissions, through tangible tools, guidance and our contributions to the Global Media Sustainability Framework. With the Beyond Reach Social Gap Analysis, we also took an important first step into the social impact topics the industry needs to tackle with the same seriousness. In 2026, I’m excited to work with the committee and partners across Europe to accelerate adoption, improve interoperability, and move from good intentions to repeatable decisions and real-world outcomes.”
This year, we have also kept policy at the forefront of our work, driving discussions that demonstrate the value of digital advertising and ensuring the industry’s voice is heard on key EU initiatives.
Here are some of the key highlights:
As we look ahead to 2026, get ready for another year of inspiring content, insightful research, dynamic events, and exciting initiatives and updates from IAB Europe.
We’ll continue to expand our work in Advertising & Media, Retail & Commerce Media, Sustainability and Policy, while continuing to explore emerging and innovative areas such as AI, programmatic, addressability, CTV and more.
We’re also thrilled to announce that our annual Interact conference will take place in an exciting new location, so stay tuned for more details coming soon.
If you’re interested in joining IAB Europe or are already a member and want to get more involved in our committees, task forces, outputs, or content next year, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at communication [at] iabeurope.eu.
A heartfelt thank you to all our members for making 2025 such a remarkable year. Your expertise, collaboration, and enthusiasm drive everything we do.
Here’s to a joyful festive season, a well-deserved break, and an exciting 2026 ahead - let’s keep shaping the future of digital advertising together!
