UK set to be first country in which more than half of ad spend goes digital

Thanks to our obsession with all things electronic, the UK is predicted to become the first country in the world where more than half of all advertising spend is on digital media. Marketing services company WPP has predicted that the UK ad market will hit £15.7 billion in 2015, with online advertising growing 12.7% - meaning that for the first time worldwide, more than £1 in every £2 of ad spend will go on digital media. Coming in behind are Sweden, Denmark and Australia, with 47%, 43% and 42% of total ad spend predicted to go on digital marketing respectively.

What this means is that traditional marketing media such as newspapers, magazines, posters, billboards and TV are being slowly replaced by new, digital platforms like social media and pay per click (PPC) advertising. So why is this happening? And why is the UK ahead? The simple answer is that advertisers follow media usage, and in terms of spend per head, Britons are the most enthusiastic online shoppers in the world. To add to this, there is a high level of credit card usage, and rapidly-adopted smartphone use, which has slowly changed how advertisers spend their money. Paid search advertising is still the number one choice for advertisers.

Unsurprisingly, most paid search advertising is done with Google, who have a 90% share on the UK search advertising market, with Bing close but still massively far behind. Facebook is also predicted to be a huge beneficiary of this increased digital marketing spend, with eMarketer estimating the UK branch of the social media giant will make more than £720 million this year. Meanwhile, national newspaper advertising is predicted to decline 8.3% to £980 million.

In short, traditional marketing is slowly declining, but will likely never truly disappear completely. Nonetheless, businesses need to adapt if they want to make the most of their marketing budget.