UK digital advertising spend, 2017 to 2025

Key findings

• UK digital adspend reached £40.5bn in 2025, the first year above £40bn.
• Spend rose from £16.5bn in 2020 to £23.5bn in 2021, the biggest annual jump in the series.
• The UK digital ad market in 2025 was about three and a half times the size it was in 2017 (£11.55bn).

The data

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 (2025 total)
• IAB UK, Digital Adspend 2024: UK's overall digital ad market hits £35.5bn (2024 total)
• IAB UK, Digital Adspend 2023: Digital ad market grows 11% to £29.6bn (2023 total)
• IAB UK, Digital ad spend resilient in face of challenging 2022 as market grows 11% to £26.1bn (2022 total)
• IAB UK, Digital ad spend soars 41% to hit record high in 2021 (2021 total)
• IAB UK, Six months of UK digital adspend now exceeds whole of 2020 (2020 total (£16.5bn))
• IAB UK, Understanding ad spend pre COVID-19 is invaluable (2019 total (£15.69bn))
• IAB UK, Digital Adspend 2018 results (2018 total (£13.44bn))
• IAB UK, Full Year 2017 Digital Adspend Results (2017 total (£11.55bn))

Each year's total is the headline UK digital adspend figure as published by IAB UK in its Digital Adspend announcements (produced with PwC up to the early 2020s and with mediasense more recently). Figures are nominal and not adjusted for inflation.

These are figures as first published, so years are not all on an identical basis: IAB UK has revised its methodology over time. For example, the 2025 release reports 10% growth to £40.5bn, which implies a restated 2024 figure higher than the £35.5bn originally published. The full reports with restated back series are members-only. For context, IAB UK reports £21.2bn of digital adspend in the first half of 2026, up 13% year on year (not included as a row because it is a half year).

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