AA/WARC Expenditure Report: industry reaction – part one

Following the publication of the refreshed advertising Expenditure Report from the Advertising Association and Warc (which revealed that UK ad investment increased by 6.4% year-on-year in 2025) New Digital Age gathers reaction from across the digital marketing and media industries…



Suzanna Chaplin, CEO & Founder, esbconnect

The headline figures are encouraging but I’m slightly concerned to see so much budget still going to search and social media. The walled gardens have always been a pretty safe bet for advertisers, but with the defeat for YouTube and Meta in the social media action case in the US, plus the UK government’s plans to introduce restrictions on social media use for under-16s in the UK, advertisers need to look beyond them to find future growth.

Some are doing so by turning to retail media, as evidenced by its sharp growth, but it’s not the only new game in town. Connected TV is opening the door to TV advertising for brands that thought they couldn’t afford it, while tried and trusted channels like email are still delivering results and evolving to enable brands to re-engage website visitors via their inbox. There are so many options out there beyond the ones traditionally considered safe. Now is the time to start investigating them.

Ant Clements, UK Country Manager, impact.com

These figures are largely confirmatory rather than revelatory. The dominance of search and social across UK media spend has long been established – both anecdotally and through previous WARC research – but what’s genuinely interesting is finally seeing retail media ringfenced as its own category. Unsurprisingly, it’s flourishing.

Yet the headline that warrants closer scrutiny is the 1.2% contraction in traditional TV advertising. It would have been considerably steeper had addressable TV not surged 37%. That single metric tells a compelling story we’ve observed for some time: audiences are actively switching off from broadcast messaging. Consumers aren’t clamouring for brand monologues; they’re seeking out genuine voices – creators, influencers, trusted peers – who offer candid perspectives and real advice.

This pivot raises an interesting question for WARC’s next refresh: shouldn’t partner marketing – spanning influencers, creators and the affiliate ecosystem – warrant its own reporting category? The commercial returns are increasingly substantial, and the media investment flowing into these channels continues to grow meaningfully.

James Taylor, Founder and CEO, Particular Audience

The AA/WARC’s decision to finally report Retail Media as a standalone channel is a watershed moment for the UK advertising industry. It officially validates what we’ve seen building for years: retailers are now media powerhouses in their own right. Seeing Retail Media hit £3.7bn for 2025 with a staggering 30.5% growth in Q4 proves that brands are aggressively shifting budgets closer to the point of purchase. In an era of economic uncertainty and cookie deprecation, the closed-loop attribution and high-intent, first-party data that retail networks offer aren’t just a ‘nice to have’—they are the most resilient line items on a CMO’s media plan.

Sarah Flannery, VP Media Strategy, Jellyfish

The 2026 forecast of £50bn+ sounds confident, but the asterisk matters. 7.5% growth into a climate of economic uncertainty means marketers will need to work harder to justify every pound. The channels growing fastest all share one trait: measurability. In tighter times, money flows to where you can prove it’s working, and that will only accelerate the divergence between accountable digital formats and traditional channels still trading on reach alone.

Read more in: NewDigitalAge