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Advertising - Headline statistics

updated
May 12, 2021
Published on:
March 16, 2020
January 24, 2021

  • The Advertising Association published its UK Advertising Exports Report 2021 showing that international trade in UK advertising and market research services grew 7% year-on-year to reach a new record level of £11bn in 2019.
  • The figures are taken from an analysis by the advertising industry think tank, Credos, of data from the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) Pink Book. The data shows advertising and market research services in third place among comparable industries in 2019, behind insurance and pension services (£20bn) and computer services (£12bn).
  • The US remains the largest single country importer – importing £1.1bn worth of UK advertising and market research services – consistent with previous years. France (£785m), Germany (£712m), Switzerland (£643m) and Ireland (£539m) are the next largest importers of UK advertising, market research, and opinion polling services.
  • The UK once again recorded a net surplus in payments, this time with a value of around £3.8bn – a trend that has persisted since 2013. However, imports rose by 58% versus 2018 meaning that the overall balance of payments dropped by 33%.
  • The DCMS has also published a statistic for exports of advertising services which was £4.98bn in 2018. For an explanation of the methodologies behind the two sets of statistics, please click on the reports in the links listed under sources below.
  • The latest Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report, the only source to collect advertising revenue data across the entire media landscape, forecasts UK adspend will grow by 15.2% this year to reach a total of £27.0bn. This will recover the entirety of 2020’s £1.8bn decline and is expected to precede a 7.2% rise in 2022, by when the market will be worth a record £29.0bn.
  • Forecasts suggest the UK is on course to achieve the strongest ad trade recovery of any major global market this year, and this puts the UK economy in a position to bounce back strongly post-pandemic, as every pound invested in advertising generates six in GDP.
  • According to official DCMS Economic Estimates, advertising and marketing generated Gross Value Added (GVA) of £17.1bn in 2019, and there were 190,000 people employed in UK advertising and marketing in 2019.

Sources:

(i) AA Exports Report, March 2021; DCMS Sectors Economic Statistics - Trade, February 2020

(ii) AA/Warc Expenditure report, April 2021

(iii) ibid

(iv) DCMS Sectors Economic Estimates - GVA DCMS, December 2020; Regional GVA, February 2019

(v) DCMS Sectors Economic Estimates - Employment, April 2020

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