Report: UK ad spend records £46.7bn media investment in 2025
April 30, 2026
The Advertising Association and WARC has published a refreshed advertising Expenditure Report, following extensive collaboration with industry stakeholders to ensure advertising investment reflects the evolving media landscape.
The latest report – drawn from a survey of media owners and the industry bodies that represent them – reveals that UK advertising investment increased by 6.4 per cent year-on-year in 2025 to reach £46.7 billion (€53.9bn), with data showing £12.9 billion was committed to media during 2025’s festive season alone.
AA/WARC’s refresh includes updated channel definitions, developed in consultation with stakeholders responsible for each channel, as well as a simplified reporting format. The Advertising Association and WARC worked closely with representative industry bodies, including IAB UK, IPA, ISBA, Newsworks, MarketReach, Outsmart, the Cinema Advertising Association, PPA, Radiocentre and Thinkbox to redraw media definitions to reflect current trading practices.
Q4 2025 Performance
The new figures reveal a total investment by advertisers of £12.9 billion in media space during Q4 2025, an increase of 8 per cent year-on-year. Within this, retail media (30.5 per cent), addressable TV (26.9 per cent) and social media, including YouTube, (22 per cent) all saw strong double-digit growth. Search, now excluding retail media, rose 8.6 per cent during the festive season while out of home (4.5 per cent) and radio (2.1 per cent) both saw overall spend increases.
Full year 2025 and forecasts
Across 2025, advertising investment increased by 6.4 per cent year-on-year to reach £46.7 billion. Double-digit growth was recorded across addressable TV (37 per cent), social media (21 per cent), retail media (17.5 per cent) and online radio (14.9 per cent) that year. Search (5.8 per cent), cinema (3.4 per cent) and out-of-home (2.3 per cent) also saw an increase in year-on-year growth. Search has continued to account for the biggest share of UK advertising investment at 38.3 per cent, followed by social media (24.7 per cent) and TV (11.2 per cent).
Looking ahead, AA/WARC forecasts predict an increase in advertising investment by 6.6 per cent to £49.8 billion in 2026, and by 5.6 per cent to £52.6 billion in 2027.
This refresh represents phase one of a programme to update AA/WARC’s Expenditure Report in line with the UK’s dynamic advertising and media landscape. A second phase will see a working group of stakeholders convened to address further areas for refinement, including developing a clearer understanding of investment in the influencer / creator channel, how to address investment in the emerging Gen AI / LLM advertising channel, and increased understanding of how investment in media may differ between large brand advertisers and the long tail of SMEs, which together are estimated to comprise 3.5 million UK businesses alone that advertise each year in the UK, as well as many more from overseas.
Stephen Woodford, Chief Executive of the Advertising Association, said: “I would like to thank all our stakeholders for their feedback, collaboration and active participation in this process. This evolution of the AA/WARC Expenditure Report will ensure the industry has the best possible information to guide understanding of investment across the UK advertising and media landscape, reflecting how dynamic and diverse that landscape has become.”
James McDonald, Director of Data, Intelligence & Forecasting, WARC, added: “The AA/WARC Expenditure Report has been a staple for practitioners for over four decades, and this latest iteration – developed in close consultation with industry stakeholders – ensures our investment benchmarks will continue to accurately reflect the pace of change in advertising trade for many years to come. The result is greater clarity and transparency around media investment in the UK, to the benefit of both the media industry and the public at large.”
