Direct mail continues to confound the doom-mongers, according to new figures which show the market continued to grow last year as expenditure for the entire UK advertising market rose at its highest rate since 2010, increasing by 7.5% to £20.1bn.
Unsurprisingly, Internet adspend increased the most – up 17.3% to £8.6bn – with mobile accounting for 78% of that growth, reaching a total of £2.6bn, according to the Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report.
The UK is comfortably the largest Internet advertising market in Europe and ranks third globally, behind the US and China.
Although direct mail spend recorded modest growth (up 1.4% year on year) to £1.9bn, it proves just how resilient the discipline is; during the same period overall mail volumes continued to decline, and the figures do not include unaddressed letters, leaflets and door-drops, which would push total budgets way over the £2.2bn mark.
It remains the third largest medium behind TV, which rose 7.3% to a record £5.3bn. The poster market – so-called out of home media – increased 3.9% to £1.1bn, while radio (up 2.9% to £592m) also grew.
Cinema put in an impressive performance, rising 20.8% to reach a new high of £238m, driven by high-grossing films like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Bond movie Spectre.
The strong growth in total UK adspend is expected to continue with a rise of 5.5% forecast in both 2016 and 2017.
Advertising Association chief executive Tim Lefroy said: “The UK is the fastest-growing major advertising market in Europe, and its most successful exporter. It’s a tribute to our creativity and technical innovation.”
The data shows that as a share of GDP, UK adspend rose to 1.08% in 2015, higher than any other G7 nation. For every man, woman and child in the UK, £308.56 was spent on advertising last year.
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