Liam Walsh
Liam is a Co-Director at Intelligency and heads up the agency's Digital Intelligence & Paid Social activity. Over the last decade, he has worked with brands from the world of sports such as Premier League clubs to entertainment such as Channel 4 and Disney.
The total digital advertising expenditure expanded by 11% to £29.6 billion in 2023, as reported by IAB and PwC.
By how much has spending increased in 2023?
The ad industry has bucked the trend against the UK economy as it grew strongly in the last 12 months. The economy has grown by only 0.1% however the growth in markets such as podcasting and connected TV (CTV) has helped to strengthen the market. The media spend in retail increased by 12% in 2023 with brands trying to gather first-party data with the degradation of cookies occurring this year. Group M has predicted that there will be further growth of 8.4% this year.
Why has spending increased?
Investment in podcast advertising has led the way with the increase. This form of advertising hit double digits in terms of growth (23%) whilst CTV rose by 21% and digital out-of-home advertising went up by 12%.
Paid Social advertising continued to be a key source of marketing for brands. Advertisers spent across Meta and TikTok aggressively and consequently the budgets rose by 20%. As society grows more and more reliant on technology and new forms of social engagement, advertisers are attempting to capitalise on social media.
In consequence, mobile advertising also made gains with a rise of 15% in 2023 – which equates to around £16.7 billion and a 10% increase on the 4% growth in 2022. Growth is likely to be driven by more and more young and old people adopting online shopping and spending more time on their devices.
Given the forthcoming (but delayed!) phase-out of third-party cookies, the landscape of digital advertising is changing significantly and industry analysis anticipates that this will continue to cause dramatic changes and growth in the ad ecosystem.
