UK Ad Spend declined -2% In the First Five Months of 2023, with Digital Growing +6% And Linear TV Dropping -16%

Guideline, powered by SMI launches its UK ad spend product, sourced from actual bookings of all major agency holding groups and several leading independent media agencies

The UK ad market dropped -2% in 2023 YTD (January to May), an improvement from the trends seen in 2H 2022, when the market declined -4% YoY. Digital media, which represented 55% of the share and grew +6%, was the driving force in the January-May 2023 period, with Outdoor also increasing +8%. All other media types showed YoY declines.

That’s according to new data from Guideline, powered by Standard Media Index (SMI). In conjunction with the release of this data, Guideline announced today the launch of its UK ad spend product, which captures actual media investment from all six major holding groups and the largest independent agencies within the UK, representing more than 90% of the agency market across all media: Digital, TV, Outdoor, Radio, and Print.

“With Guideline established as the single source of truth for ad spend in other key markets like the US, Canada and Australia, expanding into the UK was a top priority for our stakeholder community, from our agency partners to our international media owner and brand subscribers” said Scott Knoll, CEO at Guideline. “In partnership with the UK’s largest agencies we’re bringing much needed transparency, accuracy, and timeliness to the UK media ecosystem, helping improve how media is bought and sold in a highly fragmented and growingly complex media market“.

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Other findings in the UK ad market for the January-May 2023 period include:

• The UK market delivered a better performance than other major English-speaking markets such as North America and Oceania, which decreased -3% and -4%, respectively.
• While Linear TV dipped -16%, BVOD spend increased +7%, now representing approximately 25% of the premium video share across Linear and Digital
• Within Digital, Programmatic buying grew +13% YoY. Social was +8% up, while Search grew +2%.
• The “Apparel and Accessories” product category saw the biggest levels of growth, up 22% YoY in the January-May period, with the second highest growth category being “Automotive”, up +20% YoY.

Guideline’s ad spend solution powers deep levels of reporting granularity for both the buy and sell sides, including visibility into Publishers and Product Categories, and enabling a wide range of use cases for media owners, agencies, consulting companies, brands and financial investors as they optimize their media trading operations and drive new business.

This launch comes on the heels of the company’s acquisition of Mediaocean’s global media planning tool, Lumina, and rebrand to Guideline, which highlights the company’s role as a trusted authority in guiding advertising decisions for a majority of the world’s largest brands, agencies, and media owners.

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