Advertising is on the up, with UK spend expected to increase to £21.8 billion, up from £20.5 billion in 2018.

That’s according to the latest forecasts by media investment group, GroupM, which predict 6.1 percent growth for 2019, down from 7.8 percent in 2018, with this year aided by decent underlying growth, admittedly with a slight decline.

Brexit still occupies management bandwidth, which in turn affects ad-budget setting with the potential to lead to reductions.

Digital advertising continues to grow at around 11 percent for 2019, accounting for more than 60 percent of total UK advertising, of which over half is search.

Digital media ‘pure plays’ represent the largest group of ad sellers, with Facebook and Google accounting for around three-quarters of the figure on a gross basis.

After hitting £4.5billion, television accounts for around 20 percent of media investment and remains a stable medium in terms of advertising, with spending left unchanged in 2018 over 2017, with levels set to remain for a 24 month period.

Radio also appears set to hold on to its revenue base this year, followed by closer to +2 percent growth next year, along with Out-of-Home (OOH), digital formats which are becoming increasingly important, accounting for half of spending in OOH during 2018, with further share gains still to come especially as more automation takes root, including the emergence of performance-based targeting and data-driven trading. For now, GroupM forecasts growth exceeding +3 percent in each of 2019 and 2020.

The losers in the advertising game continue to be print, with newspapers and magazines now accounting for less than 10 percent of media investment combined in 2019, down from more than 50 percent in a 15-year period.

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