Marketing spend rises for seventh consecutive quarter, defying doomsayers: Marketing spend rises for seventh consecutive quarter, defying doomsayers. Total marketing budgets were up for the seventh consecutive quarter in the last three months of 2022, in spite of cost-of-living pressures on consumers and forecasts of recession, according to the IPA's latest Bellwether Report.

While the figures are not anomalous, given Q4 contained both the festive period and a World Cup tournament, there is clearly reason for optimism.

The UK economy is far from buoyant, however, with the IPA noting it is widely expected to enter "technical recession" at the end of 2023. Nonetheless, 20.2% of survey respondents upwardly revised their total marketing spend in Q4, with 18% recording cuts, giving a positive net balance of 2.2%. It marked the "longest uninterrupted sequence of growth for four years", and denoted little change on the previous quarter, which had a net balance of 2.1% (Source: Campaign 2023).

Campaign Against Antisemitism takes to the streets of UK cities: Britain’s first-ever national billboard campaign seeks public’s support against antisemitism in run-up to Holocaust Memorial Day​.

Campaign Against Antisemitism is bringing a message of inclusivity to British streets with an out-of-home ad campaign by Manchester agency One Day that challenges hate crime and stereotypes (Source: Drum 2023).

Lower CPMs drive advertisers to TikTok, but is it ready to challenge Google and Meta? TikTok has lowered its advertising rates to attract more ad spend and gain a larger share of the digital ads market as online spending slows down. Will that help it overtake Google and Meta as the platform of choice for advertisers? 

Advertisers who typically use Facebook and Google are seeing more revenue when testing TikTok as the platform charges a lower cost per thousand impressions (CPMs). 

According to Sensor Tower, the increase in revenue when spending on TikTok has seen advertisers spend more on the platform. TikTok witnessed the highest growth in US ad spending in the third quarter of 2022, as brands opened their wallets. Disney's ad spend on TikTok, for example, increased just under $3 million in the first quarter of 2022 to $17.9 million. 

However, even as more brands turn to TikTok, the platform’s low CPMs indicate that there are far fewer brands bidding for a lot of inventory on the platform compared to hundreds of millions of advertiser accounts on Google and Meta (Source: Campaign 2023).