The AA/WARC Expenditure Report says UK ad spend will hit a record £14bn this festive quarter, but almost all of the growth is going to social, retail media and addressable TV. For anyone who buys print, radio or linear airtime, that leaves a lot of space to be had late and at a discount.
What’s happened
The Advertising Association and WARC have published their latest UK adspend figures and forecast. UK advertising grew 11% year on year to £12.3bn in the second quarter of 2026, helped by the World Cup, and the full year is now expected to reach £51.3bn, up 9.9%, with the fourth quarter forecast at a record £14.0bn, up 8.2%. The money, though, is not spread evenly: AA/WARC expects social media to grow 18.5% in Q4, retail media 16.2% and addressable TV 15.1%, while out of home grows 7.5%, total TV just 1.6%, radio falls 1.3% and published media (national news, regional news and magazines) falls 3.5%. The full medium-by-medium breakdown is on The Media Leader.
Why it matters to anyone buying print, radio or TV this quarter
A record Christmas sounds like bad news for a late buyer, because record demand usually means full breaks and full pages. Look at where the growth is actually going, however, and the picture is brighter. The channels auction houses, sports promoters and specialist firms rely on to find real customers at a sensible cost are the ones AA/WARC expects to be flat or down. Magazine brands are forecast to fall 5.2% in Q4, national news brands 2.1% and regional news brands 4.4%. Radio is forecast to dip 1.3% in the same quarter in which RAJAR has just reported its biggest audience on record. Total TV grows 1.6%, but with addressable TV up 15.1% inside that number, the plain linear airtime that most of our clients buy is standing still at best.
In other words, publishers and sales houses are heading into their most important trading period with demand for traditional inventory softer than the headline suggests. That is exactly the condition late-space buying is built for. Our job at VCM is to be the call they make when a page, a break or a run of spots is still unsold close to deadline, with a plan ready so a client can say yes within the hour. We negotiate those positions with the sales houses on our clients’ behalf, and we check the audience behind the price rather than taking the rate card as read.
The one traditional medium that is not soft is out of home, which AA/WARC expects to grow 7.5% in Q4 with digital out of home up 9.5%. That does not make it a bad buy, but the best digital sites in November and December will not hang around for a discount. Classic paper panels and smaller regional packages are a different story, and we are still finding value there.
For an auction house announcing a December sale, this is a quarter to hold your nerve on print. For a fight promotion selling tickets and pay-per-view, a record radio audience with falling advertiser demand is the best value-per-listener you will see all year. For a claims firm or specialist SME, the warning is the opposite: with social media demand up 18.5%, your cost per result on Meta and TikTok is likely to climb through December, and the money you save in print and radio is what pays for that.
What we’d do
First, we would rebuild the Q4 plan around where the softness is. For most clients that means moving a share of the budget from fixed-price digital into print, radio and linear TV, held as a floating late-space fund. Second, we would ask every publisher and sales house for their actual sold position for November and December before accepting a rate. A title forecast to lose 5% of its ad revenue should be talking to us about price, and we make sure it does. Third, we would book out of home early where it matters, typically the handful of premium digital sites near a venue or saleroom, and buy the rest late. We run that whole process for clients: the rate negotiation, the station-level or title-level plan, the copy chase and the post-campaign check.
How VCM can help
VCM buys unsold print, radio, TV and out-of-home space at the moment it is cheapest, so a record quarter for the market becomes a cheaper quarter for you. Our print advertising service is where the biggest discounts sit this autumn, and the same approach runs across radio, TV and outdoor. If you would like to know what your Q4 plan should cost right now, get in touch, call 0333 577 1848 or email James@vcmweb.co.uk. We will talk your plan through, no obligation.
