GroupM forecasts UK ad growth

This increase in spending takes the industry to an investment of £18.8 billion in 2017.

The growth is a result of digital performance as GroupM’s outlook for traditional media advertising has deteriorated slightly, from -1.1% to -2.6% for 2016 and from 0.5% to -1.4% in 2017.

However, the predicted ad market share for pure-play digital has risen by a point to 52% in 2016 and up 3 more points to 55% in 2017.

Adam Smith, futures director, GroupM, said: “The effect of the future EU exit on the UK economy is unknown, but the short-term impact was negligible. To our own surprise, we are revising UK advertising growth up.

“The main driver that we have seen is paid search accelerating again. It benefits from rising automation and the immediacy needed for mobile and performance-minded advertising. We expect digital display advertising to continue growing by 18% in 2016 and 15% in 2017. The ambition of pure play digital vendors to conquer TV territory and categories will be hard-won, but today’s undisputed winner is pure-play digital.”