If you came across the IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark 2025, you might have spotted an interesting takeaway: programmatic video grew by +19.8% in Europe in 2025. That right there is a golden opportunity for publishers. Here’s the deal: By optimizing your ad monetization strategy for video advertising, you can stay ahead of this market trend and get more value out of your ad inventory. Let’s take a closer look at why programmatic advertising is becoming increasingly video-first and what it means for publishers.
The market has already moved on
In 2025, digital advertising grew by 10.5%, reaching €131.1 billion in ad spend. Video advertising alone took a €34 billion chunk, which accounts for more than half of all display investment in Europe for the first time in history. It’s clear that a shift isn’t coming. It already happened and it’s scaling fast.
Publishers without online video inventory are missing out on a good share of programmatic ad spending. Most open-web publishers are still monetizing primarily through standard banner display when video advertising is growing significantly faster. So, what do you do? Catch the wave or miss the ride?
Why Video Advertising becoming the center of attention?
Content consumption habits have been evolving rapidly. With CTV and social-video climbing the charts, video has become key to capturing audience engagement. It matches how people are spending their time online, increasing demand for measurable, high-impact advertising opportunities. Video on trusted publisher sites provides these measurable, high-impact environments where advertisers can gain visibility and track performance.
Attention is a hot metric for brands and video ads stand out because they drive it. According to IAS’s Media Quality Report (21st Edition), video ads delivered higher viewability than display ads in 2025, at 79.7% versus 67.9%, an 11.8 percentage-point advantage that remained consistent across every major region. This level of engagement combined with changing content consumption habits, makes video a format that is worth the money.
How Publishers Can Prepare for a Video-First Programmatic Market
Programmatic video is growing significantly faster than programmatic display. According to the IAB report, ad spending on outstream and instream video formats grew by 13% last year, outperforming programmatic display, which declined by 0.8%. For publishers to stay ahead of this trend, their programmatic setup needs to be video-capable, not just banner-capable. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Your website should support video
Video scripts and ad tags are heavy and they could take a toll on your Core Web Vitals. To avoid this, make sure videos on your page only load when needed and reserve the right space for the ad slots. This reduces the chances of your website crashing, slowing down, or experiencing layout shifts.
Connect your ad stack to video demand
Integrating video-focused demand partners increases competition for your video inventory, helping improve fill rates, CPMs, and overall revenue. These partners bring advertisers specifically looking for video placements, ensuring your inventory is matched with high-quality demand and better monetization opportunities.
Invest in video content
Posting more video content opens the door to monetizing them with pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads. These are video ad formats run within the video player, and they are known for driving high attention and engagement.
Prioritize pre-roll ads
Pre-roll ads are short videos that play right before the main video begins. These ads typically deliver better viewability because users have to watch them before getting to the content they came for, making them more engaging and attention-grabbing than mid-roll or post-roll ads.
Opt for Outstream or Video Native formats if you don’t produce video content
No video content of your own? No problem! You can use Outstream and Video Native formats to run videos inside your editorial content, for example, in between your paragraphs. Just add the ad slot and connect it to a demand partner that works with video ads.
Optimize ad placement and viewability
Just because video is a growing opportunity doesn’t mean you have to stuff your website with videos. Advertisers are looking for placements that deliver high viewability and a strong user experience. If you need a guide on how to place your ads smartly, check out our article on ad placement strategies to maximize revenue.
Work with a partner that understands how to monetize video ads
A demand partner with a powerful technology can provide video-exclusive demand that’s high-quality, curated for your website, ensures your own brand-safety, and continuously evolves with the market. It’s important to work with a partner that understands the industry standards so they can guide you through the best practices and actively react to market changes.
How Refinery89 Helps Publishers Monetize Video
Our team is consistently reviewing our stack, technology, and partnerships to make sure publisher inventory aligns with current market standards. We offer Instream, Outstream (including our new PushAds), and Video Native ad formats, that are connected to more than 25 different programmatic demand sources through Single Tag, our ad monetization solution. These run inside editorial content without without requiring publishers to produce a single frame of video. Publishers in our Network who include video in their stacks see up to 5x higher CPMs versus standard display.
Optimizing for a video-first programmatic ecosystem
Video is a high-attention ad format that is becoming a more recurrent go-to choice for advertising budgets (are we’re not surprised). For publishers to take this as an opportunity, there are 3 steps we recommend to follow:
- Audit whether your current setup includes any video formats
- Check what CPMs you’re getting on standard display and compare them with the CPMs video formats could command.
- Work with an AdTech partner who understands video advertising and helps maximize your ad inventory by connecting it to premium demand and continuously adapting your setup to market changes.
Our team at Refinery89 is always on duty helping publishers navigate this trends. If you need help improving your ad setup for the ever-evolving programmatic landscape by adding Outstream, Instream, and Video Native ads through curated demand without disrupting your existing stack, give us a call.
