Despite the tough economic conditions facing the UK this year, with subdued household incomes and a softening labour market, the AA/WARC’s latest Expenditure Report forecasts another year of strong growth in ad spend in 2026. Following projected growth of 10.1 percent in 2025, the report predicts a further 7.5 percent increase in advertising spend this year, taking total expenditure above £50 billion for the first time.
The AA and WARC’s figures show strong results for Q3 last year, when total UK ad spend is calculated to have grown by 11.4 percent year-on-year. Search and online display (which includes social media in these figures) delivered predictably high growth of 14.9 percent and 14.3 percent respectively. Cinema grew by 23.9 percent, out-of-home was up by 4.4 percent, and TV eked out 0.7 percent total growth, powered by a 17 percent increase in streaming ad spend.
James McDonald, WARC’s director of data, intelligence, and forecasting, said the figures suggest “an enduring resilience across the UK ad market”. It certainly seems to be the case that the market as a whole has become more resistant to economic fluctuations. President Trump’s tariff threats caused a lot of uncertainty across the global economy, while economic indicators in the UK specifically were hardly stellar. Nominal GDP in Q3 last year was up 4.3 percent year-on-year, a much lower level of nominal growth than that seen in the ad market.
TV gets a World Cup boost
Looking at the TV market specifically, there are promising signs in AA and WARC’s dataset.
Video on-demand (VOD), which under the Expenditure Report’s definitions includes any ad-supported (AVOD), subscription (SVOD), and broadcaster (BVOD) streaming services, continues to grow at pace. VOD revenues were up 17 percent year-on-year in Q3, and are projected to have grown by 16.1 percent across 2025 as a whole.
This growth rate is predicted to slow a little next year, down to 13.8 percent. But this still places VOD as the fastest growing channel of all those delineated in the Expenditure Report by a decent margin, beating out search (10.2 percent) and online display (8.4 percent). The AA and WARC expect VOD revenues to be boosted by major sporting events, notably the men’s FIFA World Cup over the summer.
In 2025, overall TV ad expenditure is projected to have fallen by 2.3 percent, despite the strength of VOD. In 2026, however, linear TV will also benefit from those same big sports events, with the total TV market expected to rise by 2.8 percent.
It’s a less positive picture in the publisher world, however. Ad spend with national news brands and magazine brands is expected to have fallen by 4.3 percent and 4.9 percent respectively last year, with even online expenditure dropping in both cases. And while the Expenditure Report expects slight growth in online revenues for publishers next year, it’s not predicted to be enough to lift either channel into positive territory overall. In 2026, national news brands are forecast to see a 1.1 percent drop in ad spend, compared to a 1.7 percent fall for magazine brands.
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