UK Advertising Maintains Healthy Growth

The UK advertising market has maintained adequate growth in the first quarter of the year, after returning to levels seen before the financial crisis hit the country in late 2012. In a report prepared by the Advertising Association and Warc, that advertising spend hit £4.14 billion at the end of March 2013, going up by 2.4% from a year ago.

Under the partners’ revised forecast on advertising investment, the segment will likely see a 2.6% uptick for 2013 and a stronger 4.9% rate next year.

The Expenditure report is based on results from a quarterly poll amongst local news and magazine brands, as well as information obtained from the Internet Advertising Bureau, the Outdoor Media Centre, the Radio Advertising Bureau and the Royal Mail.

The healthy improvement in advertising was driven by an 11.1% lift in Internet spend, which on its part saw a solid increase in mobile advertising. TV also showed growth in the quarter, scoring a 5.6% rise. Cinema and out of home spend recorded slight increases of 1.6% and 0.1% respectively, but according to the researchers, the mediums are unlikely to stay in a positive territory until the end of the year.

News and magazine brands continued to suffer a decline in adspend, seeing volumes contract by a respective 7.9% and 11.6%. Despite the increase in digital spending on the channels, it was not strong enough to counterbalance the drop in print spending, the researchers noted.

In other media, radio registered a 2.9% decline in advertising investment, while adpsend on direct mail slipped 1.0%.