UK advertising spend hits record £4.7bn in first quarter of 2015

UK advertising spend reached £4.7bn in the first three months of 2015, a record for the tradtionally weak first quarter, driven by a surge in TV advertising.

TV advertising grew 11.5% year on year to reach £1.2bn, it’s highest Q1 figure on record, according to the latest figures from the advertising expenditure report from Warc and the Advertising Association. As well as the continuing strength of traditonal TV advertising, Warc said the sector was benefiting from new revenues streams such as sponsorship, video-on-demand services, advertiser-funded programming and product placement.

Radio advertising and outdoor advertising also performed well, leading to an overall 11.2% rise in display advertising.

However, the Warc figures will come as little comfort for newspapers and other news publishers, with digital ad growth at national news brands seeing the slowest growth on record, of 7.8%, leading to an overall decline of 6.8% in spending across the industry.

That was despite internet advertising as a whole increasing 12.8% during the quarter to reach £1.9bn, its highest ever quarterly total. The growth is increasingly driven by advertising on mobile devices, which was up more than 50% to pass £500m.

Warc research analyst James McDonald, who worked on the report, said: “We continue to record growth in digital ad revenue among both national and regional newsbrands as part of our quarterly survey of publishers, although a mild slowdown has been noted for both in recent quarters.”

“There are some concerns surrounding the effectiveness of banner ads generally, coupled with the increasing adoption of ad blockers among consumers. Looking at the wider landscape, we’ve noted that video is growing to take an increasing share of the online display market, which is currently at odds with the way most newsbrands package their content.”