Advertising Association

UK TV Ad Market Set for Growth After Flat Q1

The Advertising Association and WARC reported that UK ad spend rose 9.3% year‑on‑year to £11.7 billion in Q1 2026, prompting upward revisions to 2026 and 2027 forecasts. While digital channels such as retail media, social media and search saw double‑digit or strong growth, linear TV remained broadly flat despite a 15.5% rise in addressable TV, with overall TV up only 0.8% in Q1. The forecast expects total UK ad investment to reach £50.5 billion in 2026 (+8.2%) and £53.5 billion in 2027 (+5.9%), with TV predicted to grow 3.7% in 2026 and 3.0% in 2027, partly anticipating uplift from the FIFA World Cup. Cinema and some published/other display sectors declined in Q1 but cinema is expected to recover later in the year.

Sustainability Retreats in AdTech as Agentic AI Rises

An ExchangeWire column by Paul Evans argues that sustainability has been deprioritized across ad tech as the sector pivots toward agentic AI and related infrastructure. The piece highlights the sale of Adloox by Scope3 to Peer39, observations from Cannes where major firms showcased agent-to-agent advertising, and survey data showing declines in ESG disclosure and sustainable creative. It also notes rising industry emissions — citing Amazon's 2025 greenhouse gas increase — and warns that building agentic AI capabilities may increase the sector's carbon footprint even as sustainability frameworks and toolkits (e.g., Ad Net Zero v1.3) continue to be developed.

Conrad Bird on Simple Government Messaging and AI

Conrad Bird, director of cross-government marketing & campaigns at the UK Cabinet Office, discusses how advertising skills transfer to public-sector behaviour-change communications, the challenge of declining public trust and fast-moving misinformation, and lessons from Covid on balancing simplicity and nuance in messaging. He outlines measurement approaches (including econometrics), cites results such as the GREAT Britain campaign’s claimed £7bn ROI since 2011 and nearly 24 million downloads of the UK Covid app, and describes in-house technology and capability building — notably an AI tool, GCS Assist, used by 8,000 people across 253 public-sector organisations and used over a million times. Bird also notes governance actions: completing government procurement to onboard agencies, encouraging ~10% of campaign budgets for innovation, expanding in-house teams (New Media Unit), and using influencers and local trusted voices to counter misinformation.