What you need to know

UK digital advertising expenditure grew 15% in 2018 to £13.44 billion, driven by increased expenditure on mobile and video advertising. 2018 marked the first year mobile accounted for the majority of adspend, highlighting how advertisers have adjusted towards changing consumer habits. The market is expected to continue to grow over the coming years, aided by the rollout of 5G in 2019/20, which should further boost mobile video advertising expenditure.

Digital advertising continues to face many challenges. Regulators are increasingly restricting advertising practices, whether by cracking down on use of consumer data for ad targeting (May 2019 marked the first anniversary of the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) or creating strict guidelines over gender stereotyping. Brands/advertisers also have to contend with the issue of potentially appearing alongside inappropriate content on platforms with user-uploaded content, such as YouTube.

Products covered in this report

This Report examines the digital advertising market in the UK, which includes online and mobile ads of the following forms:

  • Display (including banners and pop-ups)

  • Video (eg pre-roll videos on YouTube, ITV Hub)

  • Social media (eg on Facebook, Twitter etc)

  • Paid search (eg on Google, Bing etc)

  • Email advertising

  • Content and native (eg paid sponsored content on blogging sites (eg Buzzfeed) or news websites (eg The Guardian))

  • Other forms of online advertising (eg affiliate marketing, audio, dynamic in-game advertising).

The Report also looks in depth at consumer attitudes and behaviour towards the GDPR.

Back to top