Blue Tiger Engage May 2026
BT Engage: May Newsletter
Welcome to Blue Tigers monthly newsletter Engage, bringing you all the latest news, trends and updates from across the media landscape. In this month’s edition we look at the major news stories capturing the headlines.
Google Marketing Live 2026: AI Becomes the New Marketing Operating System
Google Marketing Live 2026 made one thing clear, AI is no longer an add-on to Google Ads, it is becoming the foundation of how campaigns are planned, created, optimised and measured.
The event focused heavily on Gemini-powered advertising, with Google introducing a new generation of AI-driven Search experiences, conversational ad formats and automated campaign tools. New ad experiences within AI-powered Search aim to make ads more contextual and interactive, including conversational discovery ads, AI-generated product explanations and shopping experiences embedded directly into user journeys.
Google also unveiled a range of “agentic” AI capabilities designed to automate more of the marketing workflow. Tools such as Ask Advisor and enhanced creative assistants can help marketers build campaigns, generate assets, analyse performance and uncover optimisation opportunities with less manual input.
For ecommerce brands, AI-powered shopping experiences were a major theme. Features such as Universal Cart, native checkout experiences and AI shopping assistants are designed to shorten the path from discovery to purchase, keeping consumers within Google’s ecosystem for longer.
Measurement and data management also received significant attention, with Google expanding AI-driven analytics, attribution and decision-making tools to help marketers connect performance data more directly to business outcomes.
What it means for marketers: Google is accelerating towards a future where AI handles more campaign execution and optimisation, while marketers focus on strategy, creativity and brand differentiation. Success will increasingly depend on providing high-quality creative assets, strong first-party data and content that AI systems can confidently understand, recommend and surface to consumers.
Disney+ UK Ad Tier Reach Has Grown 65 Percent in Past Year Finds Barb
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ continued to see growth in ad-supported reach in the UK last quarter, according to Barb’s latest Establishment Survey, with households on the Disney+ ad tier seeing the highest growth rate compared with Q4 2025.
However, Prime Video remains the largest ad-supported SVOD subscriber base in the UK, by virtue of defaulting all members to its ad-supported plan. This means 88 percent of Prime Video households were on its ad tier in Q1 2026, reaching 12 million UK homes (40.4 percent of UK homes), up from 11.9 million the previous quarter. But Prime Video’s ad-supported household penetration is also the same as it stood in Q2 2025, suggesting its reach has plateaued.
Meanwhile 40 percent of Netflix homes were on its ad tier in Q1, reaching 7.2 million UK homes, up from 6.9 million in Q4 2025. As a result, 24.4 percent of UK homes now have access to Netflix’s ads plan. The number of ad-supported Netflix households grew by 4 percent over the quarter, and has grown by 50 percent year-on-year.
But Disney+ saw the highest growth in households with access to its ad-supported tier at almost 8 percent last quarter, and year-on-year growth of 65 percent. The streaming service had 2.8 million UK households (9.6 percent of UK homes) on its ad tier in Q1 2026, up from 2.6 million. But Disney+ also has the lowest share of its subscribers on its ads plan of the three major services, with 37 percent of its member households subscribing to the ad-supported tier.
Overall the number of UK homes with access to an SVOD service (either ad-supported or ad-free) grew by almost 1 percent in Q1, with 20.8 million UK homes having an SVOD subscription, up from 20.6 million in Q4. That means 70.3 percent of UK households now have access to an SVOD service, marking the first time SVOD household penetration has surpassed 70 percent in the UK.
And Disney+ also saw the highest growth rate in terms of overall subscriber households, reaching 7.8 million UK homes (26.1 percent of households), up from 7.6 million. But Netflix is the largest SVOD service in terms of total reach at 61 percent of UK homes, totalling 18.1 million, up from 18 million the previous quarter.
Interestingly Amazon actually lost total subscriber households, despite the slight growth in its ad-supported homes. In Q1, 13.7 million households (46.1 percent of UK homes) had access to Prime Video, down from 13.8 million in Q4.
Among the remaining SVOD services, Discovery+ grew from 3.4 million to 3.5 million UK households (11.8 percent of UK homes), putting it on the same level of penetration as Paramount+, which was flat compared with the previous quarter. NOW was also flat at 2 million households (6.8 percent of UK homes), while Apple TV+ saw 3 percent growth, reaching 3.1 million (10.4 percent of households), up from 3 million in Q4.
Connected radio listening hits record levels
Online radio listening has hit a new record according to the latest RAJAR figures released this month for the first quarter of 2026, continuing to demonstrate changing listener habits as more people choose to listen to their favourite stations via connected devices.
Online listening to all radio has reached a new high of 30.4%, which is well ahead of analogue (AM/FM) listening at 24%. Commercial radio is leading the way as online listening now accounts for a third of its listening hours, rising to 32.9% from 32.3% in the same period last year.
Commercial radio has also maintained its overall audience share lead over the BBC, now at 54.3%, compared to 43.4% for the BBC.
The total UK radio audience remains high, reaching 50.6 million a week, up from 50 million in the same period last year. Commercial radio now has 39.2m listeners, 7.91m more than the BBC.
Total smart speaker listening continues to grow, accounting for 18.8% of total listening, up from 17.6% in Q1 2025. For commercial radio listening via smart speakers is even greater, with share of listening now at 21.8%.
“These figures highlight how radio continues to play an important role in the daily lives of millions, and how commercial broadcasters are innovating to ensure audiences can access their favourite content wherever they are. For advertisers, that means commercial radio can continue to offer huge reach and enhanced targeting within a trusted environment”.
For further information, please don’t hesitate to contact us at Blue Tiger Marketing, we’re here to help you navigate the changing landscape effectively, leveraging new opportunities while mitigating potential risks.
Sources:
The Media Leader, Tech Crunch, Video Week, Adexchanger, The Drum, Campaign, ipa.co.uk, Radiocentre.org
