IAB UK’s H1 2024 Digital Adspend Report Launches

Advertisers’ investment in online video ads hit £4.12bn in the first six months of 2024, according to IAB UK’s Digital Adspend update for H1 2024, conducted with independent global media advisor, mediasense.    

Video display continued to drive investment across the UK market, marking the fourth year in a row that digital video has recorded double digit growth in H1 – indicating that advertisers are prioritising the brand building opportunities and high impact formula offered by the format.    

Overall, the UK digital ad market saw 16% YoY growth with spend of £16.22bn – far outstripping UK GDP that returned to cautious growth of 0.5% YoY during the same period.    

Meanwhile, search advertising performed strongly (up 13% to £7.87bn), growing over twice as fast as it did in H1 2023. It continues to attract the largest portion of total digital ad spend, but its share has fluctuated slightly – it now accounts for 49% of the market vs 50% in H1 last year.   

Other key takeaways include:  

• Mobile spend grew at almost three times the rate of non-mobile spend (22% and 8% respectively)  

• Non-video display grew by 17%, with overall display up by 22%  

• Digital out-of-home grew by 7% to £424m  

Commenting on the latest Digital Adspend results, Jon Mew, CEO of IAB UK, said: “This data shows that established trends – particularly the growth of video advertising and dominance of mobile spend – have accelerated in the first half of 2024. Advertisers are increasingly utilising digital channels to deliver across the marketing funnel and build brands, with recent effectiveness research showing that marketers believe online channels deliver more emotional impact than offline media. I see that reflected in the fact that video – a highly engaging and creative format – is leading the charge when it comes to spend growth.”

Looking ahead, IAB analysis (2) suggests that total digital ad spend growth will remain in double digits for the rest of 2024 and H1 2025 – with video and retail media spend both set to see strong growth. However, the impact of the autumn 2024 budget on market confidence is a notable variable that is likely to be generating uncertainty, with the latest IPA Bellwether report showing that total marketing budgets stalled in Q3. Despite this, the IPA found that main media budgets continued to grow, driven almost entirely by investment in video.  
 
Download the update here.

 
Notes  

The H1 Digital Adspend update is conducted by IAB UK/mediasense and is based on modelled data for the digital ad market between January and June 2024. It provides a condensed half-year update on key stats from the full year Digital Adspend report that is released every April. 

The H1 update breaks out spend for: 

• Search 

• Display – video and non-video  

Online video spend includes any audiovisual advert watched via the internet 

• Mobile & non-mobile 

• Classified  

• DOOH (provided by Outsmart)  

• Online audio via streaming, podcasts, retail media, gaming, affiliate, email advertising and SMS advertising are not individually broken out in the H1 update but are included in the market total. A more granular spend breakdown will be available with the full year report.