Anthony McGrathHome › Data for journalists › Business, social and email
Business, social and emailUK digital advertising spend by format, 2025
UK digital advertising spend reached £40.5bn in 2025, up 10% on 2024. Search remained the largest format at £17.9bn, but social media and video grew fastest, each by around a fifth.
Key findings
- UK digital ad spend reached £40.5bn in 2025, growing 10% year on year.
- Search was the largest format at £17.9bn, 44% of the total, but grew only 6%.
- Social media spend rose 21% to £11.5bn and video rose 20% to £9.3bn, the fastest growth of any format shown.
The data
| Format | 2025 spend (£bn) | Growth on 2024 (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Total digital | 40.5 | 10 |
| Search | 17.9 | 6 |
| Social media | 11.5 | 21 |
| Video | 9.3 | 20 |
| Retail media | 3.8 | 18 |
| Gaming | 1.3 | 11 |
| Digital out of home | 1.1 | 3 |
Use this data
Free to use in articles, reports and presentations, with credit and a link to this page. Please also credit the original source.
Sources and method
- IAB UK, Digital Adspend 2025: UK's digital ad market reaches £40.5bn (published 3 March 2026), with Oliver Wyman (Full-year 2025 headline figures by format as stated in the release)
Spend and year-on-year growth for each format were copied from the text of IAB UK's Digital Adspend 2025 release; no figures were derived.
Writing about this?
I have 22 years in Google Ads, Meta, tracking and ecommerce, and I am happy to give an expert comment or explain what the numbers mean for businesses.
Ask for a commentMore on business, social and email
Daily time spent online by UK adults, by age and sex, May 2025
UK online adults spent an average of 4 hours 30 minutes a day online in May 2025, ten minutes more than a year earlier.
Email marketing open and click rates by industry, 2025
Across 3.6 million MailerLite campaigns sent between December 2024 and November 2025, the median open rate was 43.46% and the median click rate 2.09%.
Share of UK businesses using AI, 2023 to 2026
The share of UK businesses with 10 or more employees using at least one AI technology has almost tripled since ONS first asked in late September 2023.