Conquering the UK market: Data, figures, facts and statistics

Available in 27 languages 📢

Published on: October 24, 2020 / Updated on: October 25, 2020 – Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

Decision-making aids in the form of data, figures, facts and statistics as a free PDF download, see below.

IMPORTANT: This post does not mention all available documents. These may be added gradually at a later date.

Conquering the UK market: Data, figures, facts and statistics – Image: Stephen Finn|Shutterstock.com

In 2018, 50 percent of the European Union's total population were online shoppers. Within Europe, the United Kingdom had the highest percentage of online shoppers at 77 percent. Average per capita spending on online purchases was also highest in the UK, reaching €921 in 2019. Germany came in second, spending an average of €784 per year on online shopping.

It's also interesting that many companies integrate an English version alongside their native language when building their e-commerce platform. This is usually because the technology allows it, and often not based on data or figures. Access to the UK and US markets is seen as a "positive" side effect. In most cases, there's no strategic basis for this.

And even if the UK or US market is an integral part of the global corporate strategy, comprehensive information highlighting the differences in the respective national markets is usually lacking.

Xpert.Digital, as an information and content hub, offers extensive data, figures, facts and statistics that are ideal for use in revision, realignment or restarting.

A good complement to this:

E-commerce in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

E-commerce in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

The United Kingdom (UK) has the most developed e-commerce market in Europe. According to the latest figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics, the country's e-commerce revenue amounted to 688.4 billion GBP in 2018, a significant increase compared to the previous year. Wholesale and manufacturing were the two largest sectors, generating the highest e-commerce revenues that same year.

The retail sector, in which the UK leads Europe, accounted for around eight percent of e-commerce sales across all sectors. Within the retail sector alone, online sales represented 19.4 percent of all retail sales in 2019, and are projected to reach higher levels in the coming years due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2019, internet retail sales had grown by just 10.1 percent, the lowest rate recorded in the last decade. Online retail was particularly significant in the textile and clothing sector, with the latest government figures showing that more than a quarter of retail sales originated online.

In many European markets, mobile commerce and mobile shoppers are paramount in e-commerce. In the UK, too, the proportion of smartphone users shopping via mobile devices, particularly smartphones, has increased over the years. At the same time, the number of consumers using mobile payment methods for their online transactions has risen sharply, with an expected increase of more than two million users in 2019.

The online shopping landscape in the UK is growing rapidly as more and more consumers opt for online shopping. In 2020, a remarkable 87 percent of UK households had made online purchases in the previous 12 months, representing the highest penetration rate for online shopping in the UK in the last 11 years. Clothing and sporting goods were particularly popular online purchases.

More detailed analyses of consumer online shopping behavior show that what drives shoppers to online channels is a mix of different motivations. A survey conducted in 2018 and 2019 found that price and choice were the two biggest factors. Another study on the payment behavior of online shoppers revealed that while conventional methods such as credit or debit cards still accounted for a larger share, shoppers also used online payment systems like PayPal or even digital wallets like Google, Apple, and Amazon.

Social commerce in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Social commerce in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

Social commerce describes the use of social media platforms to promote, sell, and buy products and services. For example, users can browse products on Facebook and make purchases directly on the platform without having to visit a third-party company's website. As the use of digital technology becomes increasingly popular for businesses, this convergence of social media and e-commerce offers companies a way to simplify the buying process and leverage social media advertising for their brands.

While social media connects consumers, it also plays a role in connecting marketers with current and potential buyers. Marketing strategies used in social commerce engage online shoppers through graphics, recommendations, and customizable purchase options.

Retailers and consumers have already turned their attention to automated chatbot and messaging app commerce as an extension of social commerce. However, unlike traditional e-commerce, social commerce still needs time to reach the mainstream.

Digital marketing in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Digital marketing in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

Digital advertising in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Digital advertising in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

Advertising in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Advertising in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

With annual spending of US$29 billion in 2019, the United Kingdom (UK) is Europe's highest-performing market in terms of advertising expenditure and the fourth largest globally, after the United States, China, and Japan. Apart from a dip in 2017, the UK has managed to increase its advertising spending year-on-year since 2009, and this trend is projected to continue in 2020. Overall, the advertising industry drives the economy by stimulating competition, creating jobs, and funding media platforms such as websites and search engines. However, digitalization has led to significant changes in advertising formats in recent years. Search engines, online display advertising, online radio, and video-on-demand were among the advertising platforms that saw growth in 2018. Conversely, traditional advertising in print media such as magazines, newspapers, and mail experienced a decline.

Digital advertising:
Advertisers are shifting their focus to today's most popular platforms – online platforms. Digital advertising spending has been increasing since 2007 and shows no signs of slowing. In 2019, it reached £14 million, with a projected £15.6 million for 2020. In 2018, Google was the industry leader in digital advertising with a 40 percent market share, while Facebook came in second that year with 22.7 percent. However, being marketed to online is clearly not for everyone, as the percentage of adults in the UK using ad blockers has increased every year since 2015.

Social media advertising
is booming thanks to its vast reach and rapidly growing user base – most of whom are tech-savvy millennials aged 25-34. In 2018, it generated almost $2.1 billion in revenue in the UK alone, the highest revenue of any European country. With social media penetration expected to increase globally year after year until 2025, the outlook for the industry is bright. In a 2019 survey, 39 percent of UK retailers expected Facebook to deliver the greatest benefit to their business over the next five years, while 18 percent said the same for YouTube and Instagram.

Impact of Coronavirus on the Industry:
Advertising spending in the UK was severely impacted during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. With cinemas closed nationwide for almost four months, big-screen advertising was likely to be the hardest hit. Search and online display advertising, on the other hand, were predicted to be the least affected by the lockdown. However, a positive trend is emerging for 2021, with the industry expected not only to recover but also to see overall spending growth of 13.6 percent.

Programmatic advertising in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Programmatic advertising in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

Within a decade, digital advertising spending in the UK has more than quadrupled, reaching £14 million in 2019. The largest share of this is programmatic, accounting for almost 89 percent of the country's total display advertising spend – more than in the US and the global average. Furthermore, in 2019, the UK alone accounted for 31 percent of total programmatic advertising spend in Europe, the largest share of any country. As a leader in the programmatic advertising industry, the UK is set to continue growing in this area, aiming for annual spending of £6 billion by 2021. The majority of this spending will be on video.

Programmatic Advertising Agencies – Transparency is Key.
While automating ad buying and selling comes with a host of benefits – not least cost efficiency – the rapid adoption of programmatic advertising places an increased burden on brands as they grapple with its various aspects. With needs ranging from database management to algorithm development, many companies are not fully equipped to meet these demands and therefore resort to outsourcing certain areas of programmatic advertising, primarily data management and campaign strategy. This often occurs in partnership with specialized agencies like AppNexus and OpenX, which, according to a late 2019 survey, were the two top partners used by companies worldwide to manage their ad technology. What sets a partner agency apart? According to global CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers), transparency is the primary factor in selecting a partner.

A shift to private marketplaces?
While total programmatic advertising spending in the UK is expected to increase through 2021, the majority of it will come from direct deals—that is, deals between a seller and a buyer—rather than real-time bidding (RTB) through an ad exchange. A shift to private marketplaces is also expected for real-time ad purchases, which are projected to account for more than half of all RTB spending by 2021. Unsurprisingly, this shift follows a surge in global digital ad fraud, which is expected to cost the industry $44 billion in 2022 alone.

Ad Placement and Attitudes Towards Targeted Advertising:
Most consumers agree that placement influences whether an ad is perceived as trustworthy, with negative perceptions particularly heightened when an ad is placed alongside controversial content. Overall, feelings towards targeted advertising still appear to be mixed, with 68 percent of British adults admitting they still feel uncomfortable with the idea.

Search engines in the UK

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Search engines in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

When you think of search engines, you immediately think of giants like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, as well as smaller players like DuckDuckGo and Yandex. Despite the increasing popularity of alternative search tools in recent years – mainly due to privacy concerns – Google has remained the top player since 2010, holding around 90 percent of the global market share.

Skepticism towards search engines:
Although search engines are now part of everyday life, consumers remain critical, and trust in search results fluctuates. Approximately 60 percent of respondents surveyed between 2012 and 2019 believed that search engines presented a mix of biased and unbiased information. In contrast, only about 20 percent believed in the validity of all displayed results. This skepticism towards search engines is not surprising, however, especially given paid political advertising. Google, for example, was particularly complicit during the 2019 European elections. In the United Kingdom alone, the search giant received €48,000 that year for placing political ads.

Advertising:
Machine learning and programmatic advertising have also enabled search engines to display relevant ads to audiences in real time. Furthermore, top search engines like Google have built some of the largest consumer databases, containing information such as purchase history and location. This, combined with the aforementioned technology, creates a tool that far surpasses other advertising methods. In fact, search engine advertising alone generates by far the largest share of digital advertising revenue in the UK, outperforming social media, banners, videos, and classifieds.

Market share in the United Kingdom:
Microsoft's Bing ranks second behind Google in the UK with a market share of 10 percent, followed by Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo. Despite two sharp declines in market share since 2015 – coinciding with the European Union's antitrust fines against the company – Google's growth shows no signs of slowing. The Silicon Valley giant has also dominated over 90 percent of the mobile search industry since 2014. In January 2020, this share stood at an astonishing 97.9 percent, representing near-total market dominance.

Consumer Search Habits:
The influence of search engines is so strong that 70 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom rely on them for their purchasing decisions. In contrast, only 42 percent rely on customer reviews. The most frequently searched term on Google from January to April 2020 was “AirPods”.

Google in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Google in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

This PDF presents insights and statistics about Google in the United Kingdom (UK), providing information about the internet company's online services. It includes information about Google's advertising revenue worldwide and in the UK, as well as its market share in search engines. It also contains sections on Google's Android mobile operating system and Google's video-sharing platform, YouTube.

Out-of-home advertising in the United Kingdom

Important note: The PDF is password protected. Please contact me. The PDF is, of course, free of charge
.

English version – To view the PDF, please click on the image below
.

Out-of-home advertising in the United Kingdom – PDF Download

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising, simply put, is advertising that reaches people while they are in public places. In the United Kingdom, OOH advertising can be seen on roadside billboards, digital screens in shopping centers and bus shelters, and on the sides of buses. These are just a few examples; advertisers are constantly looking for new ways to reach consumers with one of the oldest forms of advertising.

Outdoor advertising can be incredibly effective. One reason for this is that it is, in a way, one of the purest forms of advertising. Online advertising, on the other hand, always competes with the content and is often even disguised as the content itself, so the advertising can easily be missed or simply ignored by consumers as they go about their busy online lives. Outdoor advertising, however, will always get noticed.

Another reason why out-of-home advertising works so well is its potential to repeatedly reach a large number of people in a specific area. Most people will see outdoor advertising daily, with ad impressions and coverage being even greater in major cities like London and Birmingham.

These are just some of the reasons why spending on out-of-home advertising has increased, and it is predicted to rise even further in the coming years. Out-of-home advertising revenue in the UK has also increased, a trend seen across Europe and in the advertising world more broadly. Advertisers and outdoor media companies are investing particularly heavily in digital out-of-home advertising, with more and more digital screens appearing in public spaces.