Digital advertising will for the first time account for half of all spending on advertising in the UK in 2015, according to the latest Strategy Analytics report.
The report Advertising Forecast from Strategy Analytics, released in February 2015, forecasts that nearly £8bn will be spent on digital advertising in UK in 2015. They will correspond to 50.4% of the total ad spend, which will reach £15.8bn.
The UK would be the first country to break the 50% threshold for digital advertising, of the 25 countries surveyed in the report.
As the report author Michael Goodman commented: “Digital crossing the 50% share threshold is a seminal moment in the history of the ad industry”.
According to the report, UK digital spend is expected to be up by 9.5% compared to 2014:
Digital ad spending in UK is higher than the average.
According to the same report, the digital advertising market accounts in fact for 34% of ad spend in Western Europe, 30% globally and 28% in US (where TV still rules with 39%):
But even if the digital ad spend in UK is much ahead the other countries, this major shift to digital advertising is an unstoppable global trend, confirmed by all the major reports and analysis of the last few years.
Just to mention some of the latest reports showing that the digital advertising spend is closing the gap with traditional media:
- the US Digital Marketing Forecast, 2014 To 2019 released by Forrester in November 2014 has forecast that US digital ad spend by 2019 will represent 36% of all ad spending, overtaking the TV ad spend. US digital ad spend will hit $103bn (£64.6bn) by 2019, a hefty increase from the $57.3bn (£35.7bn) posted this year.
- according to eMarketer’s forecast released in June 2014 the mobile ad spend will lead next years’ rise in total media ad spending in US:
- the Advertising Market Forecast: Western Europe report released by Strategy Analyst in December 2014 shows that digital advertising is driving the majority of growth in the Western European advertising market, and all the European countries are expected to see double digit annual growth rates between 2014 and 2018. Digital media will account for more than half of total ad spend by 2018 in Denmark and Sweden.
- eMarketer’s data, available through their Interactive Guide to Worldwide Ad Spending, show that digital ad spend, now accounting for 28% of the total ad spend globally with $171B on $595B, will raise to 35% by 2018 with $252B on $710B. The switch to the digital advertising channels will be even more marked in some key markets such as China, where digital ad spend will take more than half of the market share by 2017:
