This spending is set against the backdrop of a massive drop in year-on-year car production. There were 21% fewer cars produced between May 2018 and May 2019, with a majority (52.6%) of exports going to the EU—which does not bode well for the UK auto sector. With a potential no-deal Brexit on the line, some auto manufacturers have slowed down—and, in some cases, shut down entirely—their operations in the UK. Toyota has shut down its Burnaston plant, for example, and UK-based carmaker Vauxhall has described redundancies at its Ellesmere Port plant.
“The specter of Brexit has loomed large over the UK auto industry for the past three years,” eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher said. “But a no-deal Brexit will hit this industry particularly hard. Complex and well-integrated supply chains have operated largely tariff-free for many years, but if the UK has to operate on World Trade Organization [WTO] terms in the event of no-deal, then potentially large tariffs will come into play. And auto manufacturers don’t want to have to deal with that, hence the high-profile retrenchments we’ve seen.”
For more analysis on how other sectors in the UK are spending money on digital ads this year, read our latest report.