Google remains the UKs leading digital ad publisher by a wide margin, taking in roughly 40 per cent of UK digital ad spend, new figures from eMarketer reveal.

Combining both search and display ad revenue, the search giant is expected to receive £2.9bn in ad revenue in 2014, a 16 per cent increase on 2013. While it still constitutes the majority of revenue received, increases in search spend are slowing, dropping to 12 per cent. In contrast, display advertising brings in only £556m of Googles UK ad revenue, but has grown 38 per cent year-on-year.

Search makes up most of Googles UK dominance, with the companys revenues accounting for almost 62 per cent of the total UK search ad market and nearly a third of the countrys digital ad market overall. Its share of search ad spending is expected to shrink slightly over the next three years, as the rise of mobile search serves to diversify the market.

Googles display advertising also places it in a leading position, accounting for 23 per cent of total UK display ad spending, but it is closely followed by Facebook, who will earn 22 per cent of display ad revenues this year. While Facebook may be nipping at its heels, eMarketer predicts that Google will grow its display revenues more quickly than the social network in 2015, putting more space between the two.

Twitter, still a relatively small player in the UK display ad market, will get just 3.7 per cent of display ad revenues this year, but is growing dramatically faster than either Google or Facebook, seeing a 106 per cent increase in display ad revenue from 2013. While this growth is predicted to drop off over the next few years, eMarketer predict it will still be growing at 44 per cent in 2016, when Facebook and Google have both dropped to around 22 per cent growth, year-on-year.