UK digital marketing statistics

This page collects the UK figures I reach for most when someone needs numbers for a marketing plan, a budget request or a pitch: how many people are online and for how long, which platforms they use, how much shopping has moved online and where advertising money is going. Every figure carries the period it describes and links to the public source it came from, because a statistic without a date is close to useless.

I last checked every number here on 4 October 2026. Several of these sources publish monthly or yearly, so the date beside each figure matters more than the date at the top. If you quote one in a document, follow the link first and make sure a newer release has not replaced it.

The figures at a glance

Internet use: who is online and for how long

Ofcom’s Online Nation 2025 report, published on 10 December 2025, is the most complete public picture of how UK adults use the internet. It found that 95% of people aged 16 and over have internet access at home, and that adults spent an average of 4 hours 30 minutes a day online in May 2025, ten minutes more than a year earlier. That average counts personal smartphones, tablets and computers only, so time spent online for work is left out.

Age changes the picture sharply. Adults aged 18 to 24 averaged 6 hours 20 minutes a day, while those aged 65 and over averaged 3 hours 20 minutes. Women spent 4 hours 43 minutes a day online, 26 minutes more than men. Home access is lowest among the oldest adults: one in five people aged 75 and over has no internet at home, against 5% of everyone aged 16 and over.

Most of that time is spent on a phone. Smartphones accounted for 75% of men’s online time and 79% of women’s, according to the same report. The practical point for a business is plain: if your website is awkward to use on a phone, it is awkward for most of the people who will ever see it.

Why internet figures disagree

You will find other numbers for UK internet use, and they rarely match. Usually the difference is in the method rather than a mistake. Ofcom’s time-online and platform figures come from Ipsos iris, a panel that measures what a sample of UK internet users aged 18 and over actually do on their devices. The home access figure is based on what people aged 16 and over report about their own situation. Some sources count the whole population; others count only people who are already online, which makes every percentage look bigger. Before you put two figures side by side, check they share an age range, a base and a month.

Search: Google still leads, and AI answers are spreading

Google Search was used by 82% of UK online adults in May 2025, down from 86% in May 2023, according to Ofcom. ChatGPT was the most-used generative AI service, reaching 13% of online adults in May 2025, up from 9% a year earlier. Ofcom also cites Similarweb data showing 252 million UK web visits to ChatGPT in August 2025, 156% more than in the same month of 2024.

The larger change is happening inside Google’s own results. Ofcom reports YouGov research from February 2025 in which 53% of UK people said they often see AI summaries when they search. Google calls these AI Overviews: they answer part of the question on the results page itself, and Ofcom notes early evidence that people click through to the original sources less often once they rely on such answers.

What I take from this is that Google remains where most UK searches start, so ranking there still matters, but being the source an AI answer draws on now matters as well. My guide to AI search optimisation explains how those answers choose their sources and what a business can do about it.

Social media and messaging: where UK adults spend their time

Ofcom’s figures for May 2025 show how far each large platform reaches and, just as useful for planning, how long people stay. Reach is the share of UK online adults who visited in the month; time is the average per visitor per day.

Source: Ofcom, Online Nation 2025, using Ipsos iris data for UK internet users aged 18 and over. Time spent excludes viewing on TV sets and smart displays, which matters most for YouTube.

WhatsApp is missing from the table because Ofcom counts it as messaging rather than social media. It was used by 90% of UK online adults in May 2025, and by 74% on an average day.

A few things stand out if you are planning paid social campaigns. Facebook is still close to universal among UK online adults, so it is rarely the wrong place to test an offer aimed at a broad audience. TikTok reaches fewer people, but they stay for 28 minutes a day, and Ofcom reports that its daily audience grew 37% in a year. LinkedIn reaches 38% of online adults, who spend very little time there, which suits it to reaching particular job roles rather than holding attention.

Reddit is the one to watch for search. Its reach rose from 48% to 60% of online adults in a single year, and Ofcom suggests one reason may be how often AI answers cite it as a source. Discussions about your sector on Reddit can now shape what an AI tool says about it.

Online shopping and how people pay

The Office for National Statistics publishes the share of retail sales made online every month. In August 2026, internet sales were 27.3% of all retail sales in Great Britain, in the release of 18 September 2026. Across 2025 as a whole the share was 27.5%, against 19.2% in 2019. It peaked at 37.8% in January 2021, during lockdown, then settled at a new, higher level instead of falling back to where it had been.

The monthly figure follows the shopping calendar. In both 2024 and 2025, November was the year’s highest month, at 30.3% and 32.4%, which is when Black Friday falls. If your own online sales rise and fall the same way, compare each month with the same month last year rather than with the month before.

Ofcom found that 98% of UK online adults visited an online retail service in May 2025. Amazon reached 88% of them. Temu’s monthly audience more than doubled in two years, from 13.8 million adults in May 2023 to 28.4 million in May 2025, and the resale marketplace Vinted reached 29% of online adults.

On payments, UK Finance’s UK Payment Markets 2026 report, published in August 2026, describes 2025:

• 80% of UK adults, about 45.9 million people, bought goods or services online.
• Cards were used for 64% of all payments, and cash for 8%.
• 65% of adults were registered for at least one mobile payment service, such as Apple Pay or Google Pay.
• 22% of adults, 12.9 million people, used buy now, pay later at least once.

For an online shop, these numbers make the case for a checkout that offers the wallets people already use, and for putting as much care into product and category pages as into advertising. If you want more of that shopping traffic to arrive from Google without paying for each click, that is the job of ecommerce SEO.

Advertising spend: where the money goes

The IAB UK Digital Adspend study, produced with Oliver Wyman and published on 3 March 2026, put UK digital advertising at £40.5bn in 2025, 10% more than in 2024.

The channels overlap (IAB UK says video makes up 59% of social spend, for example), so the rows do not add up to the total. IAB UK forecasts growth of 10.3% in 2026, which would take the market to £44.7bn.

Search still takes the largest share, but social spend grew more than three times as fast in 2025. For a small advertiser, more money chasing the same searches and feeds tends to push up what each click costs, which makes accurate targeting and a page that converts more valuable each year. If you are choosing between the two, my comparison of Facebook Ads and Google Ads sets out which suits which kind of business, and the UK ad benchmarks for cost per click and cost per lead show what to expect to pay.

Businesses and AI

The ONS article AI in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026, released on 20 July 2026, draws on the Business Insights and Conditions Survey. Among businesses with 10 or more employees, the share using at least one AI technology rose from around 12% in late 2023 to around 35% by June 2026. Smaller firms were less likely to use it: 28% of businesses with up to nine employees, against 49% of those with 250 or more.

Text generation with large language models was the most widely adopted type, followed by visual content creation. The ONS also describes adoption as shallow: the average number of AI technologies used by each adopting business rose only from about 1.4 to about 1.6 over the period. For marketing, that means more competitors are drafting copy and images with the same tools, and pages written that way tend to read alike. I cover how to use AI without that cost in using AI for marketing without hurting SEO.

The sources, and how often they update

The Ofcom report, the ONS data and the IAB UK summary are free to read. UK Finance sells its full report or makes it available to members, but a summary of its headline findings is free to download, and its press release gives the main figures.

How to read a statistic before you use it

Most of the misleading statistics I see in marketing decks are real numbers used carelessly. These checks take a minute and catch most of the problems.

• Who was counted. “82% of online adults” and “82% of adults” are different claims. Check the base and the age range before you quote.
• When. Ofcom’s platform figures describe one month. Platforms rise and fall quickly: X’s reach fell from 45% to 39% of online adults between May 2024 and May 2025.
• How it was measured. A panel that tracks devices and a survey that asks people what they do will give different answers to similar questions. Both are useful; they measure different things.
• Who published it. Industry bodies and platforms publish useful data, but they benefit from big numbers. A figure from a public body, or one with a published method, deserves more weight than an undated statistic on a vendor’s blog.
• Whether it describes the UK. Many figures in UK presentations come from US studies. Ofcom itself cites a US study on how AI Overviews affect clicks; it is a useful signal, but it is not a UK figure and should not be presented as one.

When two sound sources disagree, I quote both and explain the difference, a habit researchers call triangulation. It is more honest than picking whichever number suits the argument, and readers trust it more.

Your own data matters more than national figures

National statistics are good for context. They can show a board that most of your customers are on their phones, or that more than a quarter of retail spending happens online. They cannot tell you how many people search for your service in your area, or which channel brings in your enquiries.

For those questions, your own data beats any report. Google Search Console shows the searches that already bring people to your site. Google’s Keyword Planner gives ranges for how often terms are searched, and your analytics shows where enquiries come from, provided the tracking works. A keyword research project turns that raw search data into a list of terms mapped to pages, which is far more useful in a plan than any national average.

If you are building a case for a budget, open with one or two national figures for context and let your own numbers carry the argument. If you want help turning both into a written plan with a budget split, that is what my digital marketing strategy and consulting work produces.

Updated 6 October 2026