The UK’s digital ad market grew by an impressive 16% year-on-year (YoY) in the first half of 2024 to reach £16.22 billion, according to IAB UK’s latest Digital Adspend update, conducted with MediaSense. This puts growth way above the UK GDP that only achieved a 0.5% increase over the same period.
Within this, UK online video ad investment recorded the strongest rise, reaching £4.12 billion off 26% YoY growth. It’s the fourth year in a row that video display spend has increased by double digits.
Meanwhile, search advertising was up 13% to £7.87 billion, growing more than twice as fast as it did in H1 2023. Despite this, the portion of total digital ad spend it represents has fallen by one percentage point to 49%.
Overall display spending was up 22%, with non-video display growing 17%. The update also reports that mobile spend (22%) grew nearly three times the rate of non-mobile spend (8%), and digital out-of-home was up by 7%.
“This data shows that established trends – particularly the growth of video advertising and dominance of mobile spend – have accelerated in the first half of 2024,” said Jon Mew, IAB UK CEO. “Advertisers are increasingly utilising digital channels to deliver across the marketing funnel and build brands, with recent effectiveness research showing that marketers believe online channels deliver more emotional impact than offline media. I see that reflected in the fact that video – a highly engaging and creative format – is leading the charge when it comes to spend growth.”
IAB expects that total digital ad spend growth will remain in the double digits for the rest of 2024 and the first half of 2025 – with video and retail media expected to see particularly strong growth. However, it warns that the autumn 2024 budget will have an impact on whether that comes to fruition.
