UK national newspaper advertising revenue is looking to fall below £1bn for the first time this year, according to a forecast from WPP’s media buying arm, GroupM.
Total UK advertising revenues are expected to rise by 5.4 per-cent this year due to the World Cup’s expensive advertising slots, but the rise will not benefit national print titles.
Digital advertising is expected to rise a total of 12.8 per-cent year on year, while print advertising will drop to 10.5 per-cent.
“Advertisers are using less volume per campaign in print, but more digital [newspaper advertising] where quality and reach are improving,” said Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM. “In most cases however, this is not enough to replace lost press ad revenue”.
Smith explains that print revenues have suffered this year as the decline of last year’s revenue was only 3.6%.
The forecast predicts that digital media will account for nearly 50% share of UK advertising spend in 2014, which will give the market the highest ratio in the world. This growth is fuelled partly by mobile, which accounts to 19% of online display and search advertising last year. This figure is expected to rise to 27% this year and a further 35% the following year.
This represents how the digital growth worldwide is entirely down to mobile devices, it seems that advertising is following the audience onto tablets and mobiles.
