Newsbrand advertising spending in the United Kingdom (UK) 2011-2020

In 2020, national and regional newsbrand advertising spending in the United Kingdom dropped to 1.23 billion British pounds. This figure marked a decline of over 28 percent compared to the previous year and represented the lowest expenditure in over a decade.

UK advertising trends

The United Kingdom is one of the largest advertising markets worldwide. In 2020, UK ad spend amounted to 23.46 billion British pounds, and while this figure represented a significant decline on the previous year due to the impacts of COVID-19, the industry is expected to see a swift recovery as early as 2021. Looking at UK ad spend broken down by medium, search, online display, and other digital channels stand out as the main recipients of advertising funds. As consumers increasingly favor online platforms over traditional media formats, UK advertising spending on digital newsbrand campaigns had also increased prior to 2020.

Newspaper advertising in Europe

Newspaper advertising spending in Western Europe has seen negative growth for the better part of a decade. In 2020, approximately 8.75 billion U.S. dollars were allocated towards newspaper ads, which marked a decline of over 70 percent compared to 2010. This downward trend is not surprising, considering that printed newspaper consumption has long been declining in most European countries due to the proliferation of social media and other online news sources. As a case in point, daily newspaper consumption in Spain plummeted from a peak 42 percent of the population in 2008 to a mere 18 percent in 2020.