UK Advertising Delivers 25th Consecutive Quarter of Growth

Russ Curry, Ministry of New Media

UK adspend rose 5.6% year-on-year to reach GBP 5.97 billion in Q3 2019, marking the UK advertising industry’s 25th consecutive quarter of market growth. T

Stephen Woodford, Chief Executive, Advertising Association told us “UK media spend has continued to perform strongly in Q3 2019, now on the twenty-fifth straight quarter of growth. The figures show adspend increases across a range of media with digital formats and sectors continuing to drive growth. These media spend figures are particularly impressive given this was a period of Brexit and political uncertainty and very low overall economic growth. As the Credos report on UK digital advertising showed, this is in part fuelled by the exceptional growth in SME spend in digital, as well as larger advertisers continuing to move budgets into digital formats in most media sectors. The projected growth for 2020 shows these trends continuing. With Brexit now a certainty, industry’s focus now turns to the future relationship with the EU and the importance of this to the overall health of the economy, which underpins this media spend growth.”

The figures are contained within today’s Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report, which is unique in its collection of advertising spend data from across the entire media landscape.

James McDonald, Data Editor at WARC said “The UK’s ad market has sustained a 25-quarter period of expansion, but underlying data show that this growth is asymmetric – excluding online advertising, the UK’s ad market has contracted each quarter for the last four years. Online formats account for three in five pounds spent on advertising in the UK, and we expect this to rise to two in three by mid-2021, fueling total market growth in tow.”

The latest data reveals that growth in the third quarter of 2019 was 0.8 percentage points ahead of forecast. Looking ahead to the full-year figures for 2019, UK adspend is forecast to reach GBP 24.8bn, meaning growth of 5.2%. This is expected to rise a further 5.2% in 2020 to reach GBP 26.1bn.

Overall market growth is being driven by increased spend on online advertising.

UK out of home advertising spend rose 9.8% of which digital out of home rose a whopping 17.1%.


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