5 killer stats to start your week

1. Social networks will take a quarter of digital ad spend in 2018

A quarter of all UK digital ad spending will go to social networks this year, meaning marketers will spend about £3.3 billion on social network advertising – up 24% from 2017.

The increase is due to diversification in the marketplace, which is driving overall social network user rates and resulting in increased spend.

Ad spend on social media has now overtaken all traditional advertising formats in the UK, aside from TV.

However, analysts say social media ad spend will leapfrog TV by 2020, with social network ad spending accounting for a fifth of all media ad spend and broadcast TV, at just 17.8%.

Source: eMarketer

2. More than three-quarters of UK businesses say gender pay gap exists

Despite 78% of businesses saying there is a gender pay gap in favour of men in UK companies, only 21% say there is one in their own organisation.

Of the 504 financial decision makers across a variety of business sectors surveyed, 13% believe there is no gender pay gap while 7% “don’t know”.

However, when it comes to their own organisation only 21% think there is a gender pay gap in favour of men.

And 62% do not believe there is a disparity in pay at their own business.

Among business financial decision makers in London, the split is much more even, with 42% saying there is a gender pay gap in their organisation and 44% saying there isn’t one.

Source: YouGov

3. Smaller agencies are filling the gaps of the declining AOR mode

Two-thirds (66%) of business leaders who primarily work with marketing professional service providers expect to use a small or medium-sized agency, instead of their agency of record, for marketing projects in the next year, while 34% say they will work with individual consultants.

Another 78% say service providers with specialised expertise will be more valuable to their company than providers with a broad range of offerings five years from now.

And 56% say cost is the biggest challenge in working with external agencies.

The thing that would most make respondents consider hiring a small or medium-sized agencyinstead of a large one is lower costs (49%) followed by easier sourcing and vetting (39%).

Source: Globality and the Economist Intelligence Unit

4. Food inflation falls to a 12-month low

Food inflation has fallen to a 12-month low, with shop price deflation deepening to 1.0% in March from 0.8% in February, marking 59 months straight of deflation.

Deflation in non-food prices eased in March, with prices falling at a rate of 1.9% compared to February when prices declined by 2.2%.

Food inflation also slowed in March, with inflation standing at 0.4%, down from 1.6% in February.

Additionally fresh food inflation slowed to the lowest rate since March 2017. Prices increased by 0.3% in March on the same month last year, compared to 0.9% in February.

Source: Nielsen

5. Display advertising the largest driver of digital publishing revenue

Publishers experienced a 5.6% growth in total digital revenue in 2017 compared to 2016, climbing to £365.5m. The increase was fuelled by a 27% annual revenue increase from display advertising.

Revenue from display advertising in 2017 increased to £189.2m from £148.9m, while subscriptions increased by 8% to £34m.

In the 12 months to December 2017, B2C publishers recorded positive revenue growth of 8.1%, while B2B publishers reported a decline of 6.5%.

Despite this, B2B publishers saw an increase in subscription revenue of 15% year-on-year, which now accounts for 45% of their annual revenue.

Source:  AOP and Deloitte