Figures released this week by the Advertising Association reveal that online advertising spend grew to £3.3 billion in 2008, which is an increase of 17% year on year. This is despite a drop in overall UK ad spend of almost 4%.In contrast, all other advertising mediums saw a drop in ad spend with newspapers falling by 12% to £4.1 billion, television by 5% to £3.8 billion, and radio by 9% to £454 million. Meaning that online advertising is shown to be the only sector to buck the trend and actually increase year on year.
The figures come from the Quarterly Survey of Advertising Expenditure report which was compiled by the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) on behalf of the Advertising Association. The survey shows that the biggest drop in spend was seen in Q4 of 2008 when total UK ad spend was down by almost 10% compared to the previous year.
With the online platform proving itself to be the only advertising medium to show steady growth throughout 2008, it would seem that in the midst of a credit crunch, online is becoming the more attractive option for media buyers.
Another recent report on online ad spend suggests that social media marketing spend could also be set to increase during the recession. The report from Forrester Research explains that businesses are increasingly using social media marketing to engage with customers as it is inexpensive and helps to get marketing messages out to the public. It seems that if there's one advertising budget businesses can't afford to cut - it's the online one.
