Meta Overtakes Google in Digital Advertising: What It Means for Hotels, OTAs and Tourism

For years we've treated Google as the gravitational centre of online tourism marketing. If you wanted to be found, if you sold rooms, flights or experiences, one way or another you went through there. Search, hotel ads, maps, brand protection, non-brand campaigns, metasearch. Everything seemed to orbit around Mountain View.

Now something is shifting. And this isn't an industry-insider footnote.

According to eMarketer's forecasts, in 2026 Meta is expected to overtake Google for the first time in net global digital advertising revenues, with $243.46 billion against Google's $239.54 billion. The story was picked up by Reuters and several international financial outlets, and it's one of those signals that in tourism deserves a careful read — not just a skim of the headline.

Because if the balance between the two great platforms that capture attention, intent and advertising budgets shifts, then the way hotels, OTAs, destinations and tourism operators need to think about visibility, distribution and the relationship with the customer shifts too.

This Isn't Just a Clash of Giants — It's a Shift in the Geography of Demand

The news shouldn't be read as "Google collapses and Meta wins." Google remains enormous, and according to eMarketer it will still control 26.4% of global digital advertising spend in 2026. But the fact that Meta might overtake it for the first time signals that the centre of gravity of digital attention is moving.

Meta is growing thanks to a very specific mix:

• strong monetisation of Reels;
• growing use of AI to improve targeting and advertising performance;
• the reinforcement of Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp as a commercial ecosystem;
• the ability to keep users inside environments that are far more immersive and visual than classic search.

According to estimates reported by the Wall Street Journal, Meta's global advertising growth in 2026 should reach 24.1%, while Google's would stop at around 11.9%. And according to those same estimates, Reels alone is on a trajectory towards $50 billion a year.

The point, for anyone working in tourism, is that this shift follows exactly the way travellers themselves are changing.

The Trip No Longer Begins with a Search — It Begins with a Stimulus

In travel we've seen this coming for a while, and now international reports confirm it: the linear funnel — where the customer first knows what they want and then searches for it — is weakening.

More and more often, a trip begins with:

• a reel watched by chance;
• a creator talking about a destination;
• content saved on Instagram;
• a short video that turns a place into a desire;
• a discovery phase that happens before any explicit search.

This is Meta's real strength. It doesn't only intercept demand once it's already ripe. It builds demand beforehand. And in tourism, whoever manages to be present before the need arises often wins far more than whoever only owns the last click.

Google remains enormously strong at the moment of comparison and intent-driven booking. But if a growing share of inspiration forms on social platforms, and if a growing share of advertising budget flows there too, then the game in travel changes.

Why This Directly Concerns Hotels and OTAs

OTAs have invested massively in digital marketing for years, primarily in search but not exclusively. Their competitive advantage has always been partly a matter of inventory and conversion, but also partly the capacity to buy attention at scale.

If the advertising landscape shifts progressively from Google to Meta, two things become more important:

1. Discovery Becomes More Visual, Less Textual

For a hotel, a destination or an experience, this means the quality of visual storytelling carries even more weight. Not just pretty photos, but content capable of working in the language of the platforms — short, clear, aspirational, saveable, shareable.

2. The Brand Is Built Before the Search

If the user arrives on Google after having seen twenty pieces of content on Instagram or Threads, the final search is only the visible part of a much longer process. In that process, whoever doesn't exist socially risks arriving too late.

This applies to independent hotels, but it's even more true for destinations. Anyone who insists on treating social as a supporting channel, or worse as an occasional showcase, risks missing the point entirely. Meta today is not just a place to have a presence — it's an infrastructure of demand.

There's Also Another Reading, Less Comfortable: Google Isn't Only Losing to Meta, It's Losing to a More Fragmented Internet

Meta's overtaking arrives at a moment when Google is under pressure on multiple fronts. eMarketer estimates that its share of the US search advertising market could fall below 50% for the first time in over a decade — a sign that the competition isn't coming only from Meta, but also from Amazon, TikTok, OpenAI and an increasingly dispersed digital ecosystem.

For tourism this is highly relevant, because it acclimatises us to a world in which there is no longer one dominant channel to control almost exclusively. The old reflex — "we invest in Google and then we'll see" — holds up less and less.

WARC too, in its recent outlooks, underlines that growth in global advertising spend is increasingly concentrated among big tech, but that within that bloc the weight of individual channels is being redistributed, with social continuing to gain ground and investments following the environments most effective in combining attention, targeting and performance.

And for Italian Tourism, What Actually Changes

Here is where things get practical. Because the budgets of independent hotels, DMOs (destination management organisations) and many Italian tourism businesses are nothing like those of OTAs or global brands. So we can't chase the trend simply by "moving money to Meta."

The right question is a different one: in a world where Meta weighs more and more in the construction of demand, how do we change the way we tell and distribute the tourism product?

I see at least five concrete implications.

1. Controlling Conscious Demand Is No Longer Enough

If you work only on the phase in which the customer already knows where they want to go, you're already behind on a growing part of the market. You need to be present for confused demand too — the kind that's born from a piece of content, an image, an emotional identification.

2. Visual Content Returns to Centre Stage, But It Needs to Serve a Purpose

There's no point producing "beautiful" content in the abstract. What's needed is content that helps the traveller picture themselves there, that makes it clear why they should choose that destination, that property, that type of experience.

3. OTAs Could Strengthen Their Position Further

Why? Because they are organisations far more accustomed than most hotels to working on creativity, targeting, testing and systematic advertising. If the weight of social inspiration grows, whoever has the capital, the data and the dedicated teams starts with an advantage.

4. Destinations Need to Become Better Publishers

"Doing promotion" is no longer enough. What's needed is building a coherent, continuous editorial presence, adapted to the languages of the platforms, capable of feeding desire and not just information.

5. Direct Bookings Need Rethinking Too

For an independent hotel, the battle for direct bookings isn't won solely on the booking engine. It's won much earlier, when the customer begins forming a mental image of the trip. If that moment happens on Meta, ignoring it is a strategic mistake.

It Doesn't Mean Abandoning Google — It Means Escaping a Mental Dependency

A word of caution, though. It would be wrong to read all this as "Google doesn't matter anymore." Quite the opposite. Google remains crucial, especially in the phase of intentional search, comparison and conversion. And precisely because its role remains strong, the point isn't to swap one mental monopoly for another.

The point is subtler: to escape the idea that travel is almost entirely decided in classic search.

Today the tourist customer journey is more jagged:

• inspiration on Meta;
• confirmation or deeper research on Google;
• comparison on OTAs or metasearch;
• possible conversation with AI;
• booking on a platform or direct.

Anyone who keeps reading the funnel as a straight line risks investing badly.

A Final Reflection from a Hotel Owner

From where I stand, the most interesting thing about this news isn't the overtaking itself. It's the fact that it forces us to see tourism for what it has become: a market where the battle isn't only fought on the product, but on the capacity to enter the traveller's mind at the right moment, in the right format, on the right platform.

For years we believed the great filter was Google. Now the filter widens, fragments, becomes visual. And in this new geography, Meta is becoming increasingly important.

For anyone working in hotels, in destinations, in travel marketing, the message is fairly clear: we can no longer treat social as a garnish and search as the only centre of the game. We need to design a presence that holds together discovery, desire, reputation and conversion.

Because if Meta overtakes Google in advertising revenues, the real point isn't just where advertisers' money is going. The point is where the desire to travel is forming — more and more.

* The cover photo features the neighbours' cat, constantly photographed (and shared) by guests at my hotel during breakfast and aperitivo hour — and, judging by the messages and comments we receive, our unofficial brand ambassador on Instagram…