The digital ad market is resilient, with 5% growth in 2020, in the newest IAB UK Adspend report conducted with PwC.
Full-year Digital Adspend report shows that the UK’s digital advertising market rallied in 2020, following the initial impact of the pandemic on spend. The report, produced with PwC, finds that overall spend grew by 5% across the course of the year to reach a total of £16.5 billion.
For the first time, digital audio and podcasting data are included in the report, a move that reflects the growth of audio within the digital landscape.
Overall, the digital audio market grew by 17% year-on-year to a total of £103.7 million, including podcast spends which rocketed by 43%. Streaming spends increased by 8%. The social display is the fastest-growing ad format, up 19%. Search continues to attract the largest share of spend across formats, up 7% year-on-year to account for 51% of all digital ad spend. The Affiliate market grew by 10% year-on-year in 2020, to a total of £627 million.
Commenting on the report, Jon Mew, CEO of IAB UK, said: “When the pandemic hit, all of our predictions for 2020 went out the window. We knew it was going to be a tough year for the entire media industry, digital advertising included, and the impact continues to be felt. It’s brilliant news that the digital ad market has rallied and is back in growth – buoyed by spending in areas such as video, social and podcasts – but it’s important to recognise that this growth won’t be felt by all areas of the digital ad industry and that recovery is still underway. Today’s results are very encouraging and show that we’re moving in the right direction.”
In MediaTel News article Jon Mew, CEO of IAB UK added more his insights:
„For the past 23 years, IAB UK and PwC have been measuring and reporting on the size of the digital advertising market. From the early days of dial-up to the rise of mobile and beyond, charting digital ad spend across the years has been (no spoilers here) a story of gravity-defying growth. From 1997 to 2019, the market grew by 193,271%, a figure that feels impossible to get your head around until you consider how digital has simultaneously transformed pretty much every area of our daily lives. Each year we’ve charted new milestones and heralded the seemingly unstoppable rise of spend, while always staying attuned to signs of the inevitable slowdown that would no doubt come.”
