UK digital advertising spend increases to £7.3bn in H1 2019

Total UK digital ad spend was up 13% year on year in the first six months of 2019, according to IAB UK’s half year Adspend update.

Conducted with PwC, the analysis shows that Display (video) and Search were the biggest drivers of growth between January and June 2019 – up 27% and 13% respectively.

Search now accounts for £3.7 billion of total H1 digital ad spend, while combined Display (video and non-video) is worth £2.8 billion, a 17% annual uplift. Non-video remains the largest Display format (up 8% YoY to £1.45 billion), but video formats are growing fast (up 27% to £1.32 billion).

Commenting on the report, IAB UK’s Chief Digital Officer Tim Elkington said: “It’s reassuring to see advertisers’ continued confidence in digital advertising, despite the ongoing political and economic uncertainty surrounding Brexit. It’s clear from the results that advertisers are increasingly harnessing the immersive storytelling opportunities of digital video to engage people – a trend we see continued from our 2018 Adspend study released earlier in the year.”