Total advertising expenditure: FOI release

Information requested

Please advise how much has been spent this year to date (2020) on advertising by the Scottish Government and how much was spent in the previous year (2019) for comparison.

Please include a breakdown of ALL costs including:
1. Cost of television advertising, with a further breakdown of the amount spent on each channel (eg. STV, BBC, SKY etc)
2. Cost of radio advertising, with a further breakdown of the amount spent on each station.
3. Cost of newspaper/online media advertising, with a further breakdown of the amount spent on each news outlet.
4. Cost of any social media advertising, with a further breakdown of the amount spent of each platform.

Response

An exemption under Section 33(1)(b) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested. This applies as providing the breakdown as requested for each individual title/media owner is commercially sensitive and would compromise individual media owners, the Scottish Government and it’s media agency.

Therefore we have provided the total spend by media type in the below tables:

Financial Year 19/20
Media type	Gross Cost
TV	£682,132
Radio	£606,587
Newspaper	£308,012
Online	£76,305
Social Media	£579,369
Total	£2,252,405

Financial Year 20/21 (Apr-Dec 2020)
Media type	Gross Cost
TV	£5,897,515
Radio	£1,868,384
Newspaper	£2,488,933
Online	£358,284
Social Media	£1,417,057
Total	£12,030,173

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