IPA Bellwether Q4 2025 – Industry reactions

According to the IPA Bellwether Q4 2025 reading, total UK marketing budgets remained unchanged in the final quarter of last year.

With the UK’s economic outlook dimming and political and economic uncertainty throwing shade on growth, we’ve been garnering reaction from some of the UK’s top adtech, creative and marketing leaders…

James Macdonald, co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, Limelight

“The Bellwether report findings suggest a continued mood of “cautious optimism” across the UK market, with prioritisation centring around strategies that provide measurable outcomes and direct customer engagement.

“Against this backdrop, the integration and development of AI technologies remains at the forefront – not particularly as a standalone solution, but one whose integration enables efficiency, performance and scale, supporting human-directed strategy and goals.

“At the same time, programmatic advertising continues its growth trajectory, with more businesses adopting bespoke, white-label solutions.

“These solutions can deliver results without the operational burden of heavy development, cost or maintenance.

“With the focus on performance-led approaches, the emphasis is increasingly on results rather than tools alone.

Suzanna Chaplin, CEO & Founder, esbconnect

“The Bellwether report highlights some genuinely worrying trends for the industry. Most strikingly, we didn’t see the usual Q4 peak in spend, a quarter that historically makes or breaks a brand’s year.

“That absence alone tells you how cautious the market really is. Marketing is increasingly being treated as a cost to justify rather than a lever to pull, and if that mindset persists, brands need to seriously rethink where incremental growth can realistically come from.

“The report itself points to the growing pressure on marketers to demonstrate short-term returns, noting that businesses are “under pressure to deliver ROI as firms scrutinise spending decisions more harshly given the competitive market landscape”.

“That pressure is clearly coming from the top, pushing teams further down the funnel. The risk is that when brands over-index on bottom-of-funnel activity, they start cannibalising their own growth.

“You’re not creating new demand, you’re simply fighting harder over the same users – and if that user switches off, where’s the tap to fill the bucket?

“Likewise, the report highlights a focus on proving that spend works. But the truth is, no single channel delivers results in isolation; sustainable growth comes from the combination of channels working together across the journey.

“If you just focus on yes/no outcomes on a single channel, you will overspend in the wrong places.”

Piero Pavone, CEO, Preciso

“It’s not impressive to see marketing spend flat in Q4 after two consecutive quarters of growth, but with the geopolitical and economic uncertainties all around us, it’s perhaps not surprising.

“When budgets are under pressure, as they are now, it’s vital that brands make their money, and especially their advertising budgets, work as hard as possible, and in this respect, I believe native advertising could be the answer for many.

“In an era of banner blindness, native ads work because they make sense in the context of the content they appear in.

“They are not disruptive, but additive, to the browsing experience, and this is why I believe more and more companies will devote more of their ad spend to native in 2026.”

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