The YouGov data shows that some product categories fared better than others, but across the board, digital purchasing has played an important role in sustaining the CPG industry’s growth. Little surprise, then, that advertising spend in the UK’s CPG sector has been heading online, too.
While growth in CPG digital ad spend won’t be spectacular in 2020—an increase of 6.6% year over year—it will represent steady performance under challenging conditions.
Likewise, performance across formats will be broadly in line with the prevailing trends we’ve outlined for some time, with display, search, and social spend each set to post decent rates of growth in 2020, ranging from 7.5% (for social) to 8.7% (for display and for search).
It’s in social advertising, though, where CPG will outspend most other industries. At £1.01 billion ($1.29 billion), CPG social spend will make up 21.5% of social ad spending across all industries in 2020. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, which tend to be heavy advertisers on social channels, will be a bright spot for CPG during the pandemic and drive its robust showing in social spend.
This D2C consideration also plays into the other “status quo” trend that we will continue to see in the CPG space, of mobile investments growing at the expense of desktop/laptop. This year, 82.1% of CPG brands’ digital advertising investments will go toward mobile, making CPG the most penetrated industry for mobile advertising that we track.