Brexit risks cut Britain’s ad growth to slowest in 3 years

Bloomberg

Growth in UK advertising budgets has slowed to its weakest in 2 1/2 years as Britain struggles to define its future relationship with the European Union.
The proportion of companies increasing their ad spending exceeded those scaling it back by 2.5 percentage points in the third quarter of 2018, down from a 6.5 point margin in the second quarter, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising said in its Bellwether Report. Marketing budgets have expanded continuously for six years, but that’s the smallest gap since the fourth quarter of 2015.
The softening momentum partly reflects uncertainty over the direction of Brexit talks, the IPA said in its report, which is conducted and published by Markit Economics. Some respondents said they had put spending plans on hold until the relationship with EU is clearer.
“With ongoing Brexit uncertainty, it is perhaps no wonder that companies are having to be more cautious with their marketing spend and are inevitably increasingly downcast about their financial prospects,” IPA Director General Paul Bainsfair said of the survey.
The IPA survey showed proportion of companies expanding their internet-based marketing was 14 percentage points higher than those cutting it.