Breakdown of Scottish Government advertising and public notice spend: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
Information requested
You asked, for each of the last five financial years (2024/25, 2023/24, 2022/23, 2021/22, 2020/21), to provide the following information:
- The total budget spent on marketing and advertising (including promotional, statutory, jobs and other).
- The names of the print, digital and broadcast and other media where this was spent and amount spent on advertising with each one (either directly or through an agency)
- The total amount spent on publication of statutory notices, the names of the media where this was spent, and amount spent on statutory notices with each one.
Response
The answer to each part is detailed below:
The total budget spent on marketing and advertising (promotional)
The term “promotional” has been interpreted as marketing and 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 advertising.
Regarding the marketing spend for 2024 to 2025 this will be published within 12 weeks on gov.scot. For this reason the information is not provided within this response under exemption section 27(1) of FOISA (information intended for future publication)
The names of the print, digital and broadcast and other media where this was spent (promotional)
I enclose a copy of the information you requested in spreadsheet form.
The amount spent on advertising with each one (promotional)
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide the information you have requested. This is because disclosure of the information would (or would be likely to) substantially prejudice the commercial interests of the organisations and therefore an exemption under section 33 (1)(b)of FOISA applies.
All Scottish Government media buying and planning is undertaken via agencies appointed through the Media Planning, Buying and Associated Services 2023 to 2023-2024 to 2027-2028 framework, 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 in each media title would allow competitors of the media buying agency to calculate the rates negotiated by the appointed media buying agency who work on behalf of the Scottish Government.
The total budget spent on marketing and advertising (jobs)
The total amount of spend on advertising jobs has been provided below:
| 2020-21 297,680. | 24 |
| 2021-22 414,763. | 70 |
| 2022-23 269,262. | 23 |
| 2023-24 264,534. | 75 |
| 2024-25 141,735. | 68 |
The names of the print, digital and broadcast and other media where this was spent and the amount spent on advertising with each one (jobs)
The Scottish Government does not have all the information you have asked for because information on the specific channels used is not captured as standard on the finance system used to make payments, so it has not been possible to provide an accurate breakdown of the spend attributable to individual channels. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have all the information you have requested.
However some information can be provided, as shown in the table below. This shows the total spend from the two recruitment media buyers contracted from the procurement framework (People Scout/TMP and Penna). And two named channels used (Civil Service Jobs and LinkedIn).
| People Scout / TMP | Penna | Civil Service Jobs | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | 246,546.56 | 0.00 | 51,133.68 | 0 |
| 2021-22 | 357,948.50 | 0.00 | 56,815.20 | 0 |
| 2022-23 | 156,607.43 | 0.00 | 85,954.80 | 26,700 |
| 2023-24 | 121,775.55 | 0.00 | 110,809.20 | 31,950 |
| 2024-25 | 0.00 | 5,190.08 | 104,595.60 | 31,950 |
| Total | 882,878.04 | 5,190.08 | 409,308.48 | 90,600 |
Please note that recruitment advertising is commissioned in two ways:
1. The Scottish Government procure advertising services from two different platforms as standard for external vacancies (Civil Service Jobs and LinkedIn). Costs for advertising services are agreed in advance for 12 months provision of services - this represents a cost-effective approach, based on volumes. Costs have been provided for periods active with each platform (Civil Service Jobs from 2020 – 2025 and LinkedIn 2022 – 2025)
2. The Scottish Government also commissions targeted advertising for vacancies which are required to attract a significant volume of applications (such as graduate schemes) or for hard to fill roles (typically those which require highly specialist skills, or where market demand is high). This type of advertising is commissioned via a procurement framework. The framework is used to procure advertising from a wide range of channels and media providers. You can view details of the framework on Gov.scot at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/procurement-recruitment-advertising-and public-notices-framework-2024-2/ This version of the framework was awarded to an external supplier (Penna) in July 2024, prior to this a historical version of the framework with a different supplier (People Scout / TMP) was in operation. The suppliers on this framework (People Scout TMP and Penna) act as media buyers on behalf of the Scottish Government.
The total amount spent on publication of statutory notices, the names of the media where this was spent, and amount spent on statutory notices with each one.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. The reason we do not hold this information is because we only receive a total spend per Framework Public Body as the management information on the framework which includes public notices. Therefore, the data we hold does not go into granular enough detail in order to say how much was spent on statutory notices compared to other types of notice. It also does not detail which media was used or how much was spent on each media platform. This is a formal notice under section 17 of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG