---
title: "Advertising Equity 2026 study"
url: https://nepa.com/blog/advertising-equity-2026-study/
last_modified: 2026-09-18T06:47:43+00:00
source: Nepa AB (https://nepa.com)
---

# Advertising Equity 2026 study

## Sweden’s 2026 Advertising Equity Study

Every brand is chasing the same scarce resource: attention. Media budgets buy exposure, but they don’t buy a willingness to engage — that has to be earned, campaign after campaign, over years rather than weeks. Nepa’s new Advertising Equity 2026 study puts a number on that willingness, benchmarking 95 of Sweden’s largest brands on how much value consumers feel their advertising has built up over time.

Here’s what the study found, and why the concept behind it deserves a spot next to brand tracking and campaign metrics on every marketer’s dashboard.

## What Is Advertising Equity, Exactly?

Ask people how they generally feel about a brand’s advertising — not one execution, but the impression built up over years — and a clear signal emerges. Nepa measures it with three simple statements, each rated on a 7-point scale: whether a brand’s advertising is generally interesting, worth paying attention to, and rewarding to take part in. Average the three, and the result is a single score that captures something brand trackers and campaign dashboards each miss on their own.

Brand equity explains the overall strength of a brand — whether people know it, trust it and are more likely to choose it. Campaign metrics show how one specific execution performed. Advertising equity sits in between: it isolates advertising’s own contribution to the brand and reveals whether that contribution is accumulating into something bigger than any single campaign. Academic research backs this up — advertising equity behaves as a distinct, measurable asset, not simply a stand-in for how much people already like the brand.

The mechanism behind a strong score is mutual value. Advertising that only asks for something — time, attention, money — has to fight harder to be noticed. Advertising that gives something back, whether entertainment, knowledge, aesthetic pleasure, inspiration or emotional resonance, is better placed to earn attention instead of just interrupting for it.

## Why It’s Worth Building

A strong advertising equity score isn’t just a nice number — it changes the conditions the next campaign launches into:

- It makes media budgets work harder. When people have already experienced a brand’s advertising as worth their time, the same media spend earns more genuine attention.
- It’s a counterweight to ad avoidance. Skipping, blocking and scrolling past ads is the default behaviour now. A brand with a track record of valuable advertising is more likely to get a second look instead of an automatic skip.
- It signals something about the brand itself. Visible effort in advertising has been linked in research to perceptions of product quality, innovation, customer care — even employer attractiveness.
- It helps leaders manage advertising as a long-term asset, giving management and board conversations a way to talk about accumulated communication value rather than isolated campaign spend, and helping teams tell the difference between a platform worth protecting and one that’s just become repetitive.

## Inside the 2026 Study

Nepa surveyed 2,226 people aged 16–64 across Sweden in June 2026, scoring 95 major brands on advertising equity. Results are shown as an index, where 100 represents the average across all brands studied — a score above 100 means a brand’s advertising equity beats the market; below 100 means it’s lagging.

Charities and grocery retailers dominate the top of the ranking — a pattern that shows up clearly at category level too (more on that below). Further down the list, some very recognisable Swedish names land well above the market average, while others sit surprisingly far below it. (Note: the 95-brand set was originally assembled in 2018 to track the largest advertisers of that time, and has been kept consistent since to allow comparison over the years — it isn’t a current ranking by media spend.)

**Want to see where your brand rank?** [Download the full Advertising Equity 2026 report →](https://nepa.com/downloads/advertising-equity/) for the complete, brand-by-brand ranking.

## Category Sets the Starting Line — Not the Finish

Some categories simply start from a stronger position, because they’re more naturally connected to things people already care about or welcome in their advertising. Others are more functional, regulated, or carry negative associations that make the climb steeper. Charities lead the field by a wide margin, with grocery retail, opticians and home & leisure retailers also enjoying a built-in advantage. At the other end, categories like betting & gambling, cars, telecom and banking start from a much tougher position.

The gap between the strongest and weakest categories is substantial — but category is context, not an excuse. A brand in a tough category can still lead its competitors for attention; a brand in a favourable one can still underperform. That’s why the most useful comparison for any individual brand usually isn’t the market average, but the category it’s actually fighting for attention within.

**See how every category and brand scores.** [Download the full report →](https://nepa.com/downloads/advertising-equity/) for the breakdown.

## Reading Your Own Score

A high score suggests a brand has built a genuinely positive advertising history — people find its ads interesting, worth their attention and rewarding to engage with. The useful next question is what built that strength: the creative platform, the tone, the consistency, the brand cues, the emotional payoff?

A low score shouldn’t just prompt “why do people dislike our ads?” — that’s often too narrow a question, and it’s one of the limits of relying only on campaign-level metrics. The sharper question is what’s missing: receiver value, distinctiveness, consistency, relevance, emotional resonance, or a clearer link back to the brand. And any score is best read in three contexts at once — against the whole market, against direct category competitors, and against the brand’s own trend over time.

## Three Things to Take With You

1. Track it as an asset, not a campaign score. Read it alongside brand tracking and campaign metrics to see whether advertising is compounding into something bigger over time.
2. Put it in the creative brief. Ask directly: will this work make people more willing to pay attention to what comes next?
3. Protect what compounds. Hold on to a strong idea long enough for its value to build — but keep renewing the execution rather than letting it go stale.

### Get the full report

This post covers the headlines. The complete Advertising Equity 2026 report goes further — the full ranking of all 95 brands, the complete category breakdown, and guidance on how to read your own brand’s score against the market, your category and your own trend over time.

[Download the full Advertising Equity 2026 report](https://nepa.com/downloads/advertising-equity/)

FAQ

## Quick answers to questions you might have

What is advertising equity?

Advertising equity is the long-term value a brand builds through its advertising. It reflects whether consumers generally find a brand´s advertising interesting, worth paying attention to and rewarding to engage with — beyond the performance of any single campaign.

How does Nepa measure advertising equity?

Nepa measures advertising equity using three consumer statements: whether a brand’s advertising is generally interesting, worth paying attention to and rewarding to take part in. Respondents rate each statement on a seven-point scale, which is combined into an overall advertising equity score.

How is advertising equity different from brand equity?

Brand equity measures the overall strength and value of a brand, including factors such as awareness, trust and preference. Advertising equity focuses specifically on the value created by a brand’s advertising over time, helping marketers understand whether communication is building an asset beyond individual campaign results.

What did the Advertising Equity 2026 study measure?

Nepa surveyed 2,226 people aged 16–64 across Sweden in June 2026 and measured the advertising equity of 95 major brands. The results are presented as an index where 100 represents the average across all brands included in the study

Why does advertising equity matter for marketers?

Strong advertising equity means consumers have built a positive expectation of a brand’s communication. This can make future campaigns more likely to earn attention and helps marketers evaluate whether advertising is creating long-term value rather than only generating short-term campaign effects.

How should a brand interpret its advertising equity score?

A brand should compare its score with the overall market, its own category and its historical performance. Category context matters because some sectors naturally generate higher advertising equity than others, so the most useful benchmark is often a brand’s direct competitors rather than the market average alone.