The UK ad market grew at its fastest rate in five years in 2015 – but national newspapers bucked the trend as more than £150m in print ads disappeared and digital revenues slowed to a trickle.
The total UK ad market grew at 7.5% to £20.1bn last year, the fastest rate of growth seen since the end of the advertising recession in 2010.
While categories such as cinema advertising enjoyed a bumper year, up 21% thanks to the hugely popular return of Star Wars and James Bond in Spectre, it was a year to forget for the newspaper industry.
National newspaper brands reported an 11% fall in ad spend to £1.2bn in 2015, according to the latest Advertising Association/Warc expenditure report.
National newspaper groups have been hit by a “perfect storm” of advertisers reassessing the value of print spend en masse, while the popularity of Google and Facebook helped push digital ad growth down to a trickle.
Across titles in the quality national newspaper market, print advertising fell by 9.6% to £435m last year.
It was worse among popular and tabloid titles, which endured a 16.2% decline in print advertising to £565.4m.
Overall, national newspaper brands saw £155.4m in print advertising disappear between 2014 and 2015.
Regional newspapers, which have typically borne the brunt of changing shifts in the newspaper ad industry, performed relatively better.
They saw a 6.2% fall in total ad spend to £1.17bn, with digital advertising growing by 14.8% to £200m.
It was, as ever, a good year for internet advertising, which grew by a healthy 17.3% year on year to £8.6bn.
Within digital, mobile continues to drive growth, up by 61% to £2.6bn.
It was a solid year for TV advertising, which rose by 7.3% to £5.2bn, with the nascent video-on-demand ad market rising 21% to £175m.