Online media and marketing advertising budgets: FOI release

Information requested

Please can you provide me with your spending for 2023-4 and 2024-5 on:

* Print media advertising, broken down by newspaper or outlet; and

* Online media advertising, broken down by platform, e.g. Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, etc.

Response

*Print media advertising

The Scottish Government publishes its marketing spend annually on www.gov.scot. This includes a breakdown of spend across the different media types including press advertising. Please find below the link to the spend for 2023-24 financial year:

Marketing spend: 2023-2024 Marketing spend: 2023 to 2024 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

In relation to the marketing spend of 2024/25, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide the information you have requested because an exemption under section 27 (1) of FOISA which allows public authorities to not disclose information if they already plan to publish it within the next 12 weeks. The spend for 2024-25 marketing activity is currently being reconciled and will be published on gov.scot within the next 12 weeks.

Regarding the question of print media advertising expenditure, broken down by newspaper or outlet, we are unable to provide the information requested because an exemption under section 33 of FOISA applies. This is because disclosure of the information would (or would be likely to) substantially prejudice the commercial interests of the organisation (section 33(1)(b)).

All Scottish Government media buying and planning is undertaken via agencies appointed through the Media Planning, Buying and Associated Services Framework Agreement – Ref. SP-18-007, and never directly with media owners or channels. Using standard media buying software, common to the sector, media buying agencies can access data showing the volume of media purchased by their competitors. Providing the costs alongside this available data would therefore enable competitors to determine the buying rates (price) for individual media companies. This information is highly commercially sensitive within the sector and disclosure would materially disadvantage the Scottish Government contractor. Providing the specific expenditure for a newspaper or outlet would potentially allow competitors of the media buying agency to calculate the rates negotiated by the appointed media buying agency who workon behalf of the Scottish Government.

*Online media advertising

The following table sets out online media advertising expenditure for the last two financial years 2023-4 and 2024-5, broken down by platform/supplier:

PLATFORM	2023-24	2024-25
CRIMTAN	12,500.00	0.00
BBC WORLDWIDE	282,352.92	219,901.01
DAILY RECORD WEBSITE	3,434.00	0.00
DQ&A	4,788.92	5,220.91
FACEBOOK INC	476,498.04	317,276.98
GOOGLE ADWORDS	48,622.17	10,448.76
GOOGLE (PPC)	9540.41	4616.12
INTEGRAL AD SCIENCE UK LTD	11,428.31	7,250.74
IDP CONNECT		199,914.99
LINKEDIN IRELAND	24,779.89	7438.21
MEDIA IQ DIGITAL	29,650.17	10,000.00
MOBSTA LTD	89,124.95	112,938.15
NANO INTERACTIVE	33,219.63	22,562.50
NUMODO	239,156.16	254,138.62
OZONE PROJECT LTD	50,730.07	75,212.65
PINTEREST	0.00	2,000.00
QS		27,487.63
RAAS LAB	23,112.21	12,000.00
REDDIT INC	0.00	3,299.07
SNAPCHAT	3,154.66	4,000.00
SPOTIFY	15,000.63	69,904.20
SPOTIFY SELF SERVE	4,879.86	0.00
STUDYPORTAL		25,960.97
TEADS AD MANAGER	8,511.70	0.00
THE SUN	6,000.00	0.00
TWITCH UK LTD	11,769.56	0.00
WE ARE LIBERTY	0.00	16,241.74
WEARE8	1,500.00	0.00
VIDEO ON DEMAND DIGITAL PLATFORMS*
SKY	0.00	4,000.00
SKY BVOD	0.00	8,005.00
SKY SFVOD	0.00	4,579.72
STV PLAYER	0.00	8,000.00
RED MEDIA SALES	0.00	3,876.00
ITV BROADCASTING	0.00	7,594.00
ITVX	0.00	7,078.50
ADSMART	0.00	12,000.00
CHANNEL 4	0.00	13,524.00
TOTALS:	1,389,754.26	1,476,470.47

*VIDEO ON DEMAND DIGITAL PLATFORMS - until February 2025 these platforms were reported within broadcast channels, however the appointed media agency have updated their reporting from February 2025 to class these platforms as online/digital. Therefore, spend reported on these platforms is included as part of this response for February-March 2025 only.

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