Forecast: UK adspend to rise 3.8% this year
January 27, 2023
The latest quarterly data from the Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report shows that UK adspend rose 4.3 per cent in Q3 2022, to a total of £8.5 billion (€9.6bn). This means spend during the first nine months of the year was up 10.8 per cent, at £25.3 billion.
Additional report highlights include:
– OOH and cinema continued their strong recovery during the quarter, while search (almost 40 per cent of total spend in Q3 2022) rose by 7.7 per cent.
– Social media, including online display, saw muted growth (+4.4 per cent) by historic standards.
– TV spend declined 6.6 per cent in Q3, following on from a decline in Q2. This was driven by an 8.3 per cent fall in spots spend during the quarter. Spend on BVoD grew, however, by 4.3 per cent.
– The preliminary estimate for ad market growth in 2022 now stands at 8.8 per cent, to a total of £34.7 billion. This is a slight downgrade (-0.4pp) from our projection in October.
– Spend during the ‘golden quarter’ (Q4 2022) was estimated to be up by 4 per cent, to a total of £9.5 billion. This was half a point behind forecasts, but a good result given the economic backdrop.
– The UK’s ad market is expected to grow by a further 3.8 per cent this year, to a total of £36.1 billion. This is on a par with our last forecast, but would equate to a 3 per cent real terms decline once inflation is taken into account (compared to a 0.1 per cent real terms fall last year).