UK Advertising: The world leader

Wrapping up the Advertising Association’s latest Advertising Pays Report.

A world leader and a huge contributor to the UK economy as a whole, UK advertising has come out on top in the Advertising Association’s latest Pays Report.

According to Deloitte, who are quoted in the report, almost one million jobs are supported by the advertising industry in the UK today.

The global nature of the sector is revealed in export figures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) attributed an annual export figure of £4.3 billion to advertising services and this equated to 3.5% of all exported UK services, which is worth twice as much to the UK economy as either accounting and auditing or recruitment.

The Advertising Association teamed up with LinkedIn to create the report, drawing upon LinkedIn’s extensive labour market knowledge. LinkedIn have over 500 million members and support a substantial portion of UK advertising employees, so were able to provide a live snapshot of the UK workforce.

For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in London, 556 work in advertising and marketing - greater than the number for New York, Sydney and Amsterdam.

The international appeal of London evident at the news that 2.5% of marketing and advertising workers based in London had moved from abroad in the last 12 months.

UK advertising has the tendency to be London-centric in the press, but should the capital be the sole talking point? As the AA point out in their report, 57% of people in the industry are now based outside of London, with Manchester employing the largest majority in the sector.

The report states: ‘The study suggests that areas outside London contain a disproportionately high number of social media specialists, software developers, website managers, and online marketing managers.’

You can read the full report here.