UK ad market to overtake Germany

The UK is set to surge past Germany to become the world’s fourth biggest ad market in 2016, according to media agency ZenithOptimedia’s projections.

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ZenithOptimedia predicts UK ad market will overtake Germany in 2016.

In 2013, the UK ad market grew by $1bn to $20.9bn, while Germany expanded by just $53m to $24.2bn. By 2016, ZenithOptimedia predicts the UK ad market will have increased to $25.7bn, while Germany will grow to $25.3bn.

This year demand from UK advertisers has strengthened as the economy continues to improve, helping it to become the fastest growing ad market in Western Europe in 2013, growing by 5.1 per cent while the region as a whole shrank by 0.6 per cent.

A separate report released today (16 June) from Warc also predicts strong growth from the UK ad market in 2014, up 5.8 per cent year on year, marking the biggest increase from a country outside the BRIC nations in its estimates.

Elsewhere, ZenithOptimedia predicts the Chinese ad market, which has been narrowing the gap with Japan over the past few years, will overtake Japan to become the world’s second largest ad market in 2016. The US will continue to dominate global ad spend, expanding in size from $167.3bn in 2013 to $190.9bn in 2016.

Globally, mobile advertising has become the main driver of advertising growth and is accelerating 5.5 times faster than desktop.

ZenithOptimedia forecasts the global mobile ad market to grow by 49 per cent each year between 2013 and 2016 to $47.5bn – or 8.2 per cent of all ad spend – driven by the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets. The rate of growth means mobile will leapfrog radio, magazines and outdoor to become the world’s fourth largest ad medium by spend, ZenithOptimedia predicts.

TV will remain the dominant medium, but it is predicted its share of ad spend has “peaked” and it will fall back marginally from 39.6 per cent in 2013 to 38.3 per cent in 2016.

ZenithOptimedia’s forecast says: “This is not because advertisers are withdrawing from television – far from it, we expect television ad spend to rise as an average of 4.4 per cent a year to 2016. But internet advertising is growing so much faster – at 16.2 per cent a year – partly because it now offers credible brand-building alternatives to television.”

The World Cup will provide a boost to TV over June and July, but ZenithOptimedia predicts advertisers looking to leverage the tournament will spend more of their budgets on internet advertising, with brands more active on social media than during any previous sporting event.

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