A 2027 media budget set at this year's figure plus a few per cent buys less media than this year's did if the price of your own clicks and impressions (times an ad is shown) keeps rising faster than the budget. Somewhere this month a board is being shown 2027 as this year's budget plus 5%. Before it signs, restate the plan in this year's media prices, worked out from your own account.
This year plus a bit is a pricing decision nobody has priced
Rolling this year's budget forward bets that a click next year will cost close to what it costs now. That bet decides how much media the budget buys, and so how many customers it can reach, yet it sits inside the total without ever being stated. A number that looks like continuity is, underneath, a price forecast nobody has made out loud.
The market's numbers all point one way, and not one of them is your account
The readings below all point upwards, and each covers far more than your account.
More UK firms are revising marketing budgets up than down. The IPA Bellwether Report for the third quarter of 2026, published on 15 October and compiled by S&P Global from around 300 UK companies, found 25.6% of firms revised their budgets for the current financial year up and 11.3% down, a net balance of plus 14.3%. That is the third straight quarter of upward revisions and the strongest in nine quarters. The figure counts firms: the share revising up minus the share revising down, which says how widespread the rises are and nothing about their size.
Spending across the market is forecast to keep climbing. The AA/WARC Expenditure Report of 29 October 2026 forecasts UK advertising investment to rise 9.9% to £51.3bn in 2026 and a further 6.5% to £54.7bn in 2027, in nominal pounds across the whole market.
More money moving into the same auctions can push the price of a click up. That is an inference, not a measured figure.
The platforms' own quarterly reports show the prices themselves, worldwide and in US dollars. Alphabet's Form 10-Q for the quarter to 30 September 2026 reports paid clicks on Google Search and other properties up 8% year on year, with cost per click (the price of one ad visit) up 4%. On that worldwide average a budget up a few per cent roughly keeps pace, which is exactly why the average cannot stand in for your account. Meta's results for the same quarter, published on 21 October 2026, show ad impressions up 10% and the average price per ad (ad revenue divided by ads delivered) up 14% year on year.
One test shows what next year's budget actually buys
Run on your own account, the test shows how much media next year's budget buys if this year's price moves carry forward. Whoever runs your account can do it in an afternoon.
Take the latest three months and the same three months a year earlier, on the same keywords in Google Ads, or the same audiences and placements in Meta. Set aside any campaign whose match settings, bid targets or structure changed during or between the two periods. That includes any Search campaign that used automatically created assets (ad text generated from your landing pages) or campaign-level broad match (the widest keyword setting): from 1 September 2026 Google began upgrading such campaigns to AI Max, unless those settings had been switched off first. Their clicks are not like-for-like, so they would distort the comparison.
Then work out your own change in cost per click, or in cost per thousand impressions (the price of showing an ad a thousand times) if you pay by the impression. Divide next year's proposed media budget by one plus that change: a 10% rise means dividing by 1.10. The answer is next year's budget in this year's media prices. The working assumption is plain: next year's prices move as this year's did.
Worked through, and illustrative only: £250,000 plus 5% is £262,500. If your own like-for-like cost per click rose 10%, that £262,500 buys about £238,600 of this year's media, roughly 4.5% less than this year's £250,000 bought. That shortfall is arithmetic. Whether it also means fewer customers depends on conversion rate and margin.
Some accounts will run the test and find their prices held, or fell. That is a useful result too: it means the plan buys at least what it says, and you can tell the board so with evidence rather than hope.
Spend is one lever, and more of it eventually stops paying back
If the test shows the budget buying less media, more money helps only up to a point, and two other levers work without it. A higher conversion rate, more of the same visits turning into customers or qualified leads, wins back results without buying more media. A stronger margin per sale raises what each click can justify. And paid media follows diminishing returns: beyond some point the next pound of spend earns back less than it costs, so funding past that point buys volume the P&L does not want.
If you employ staff on or near the wage floor, factor in one more moving cost: the National Living Wage rises 3.9% to £13.21 an hour from 1 April 2027.
Four lines put the decision in front of the board
Four lines make the choice legible to the people signing it:
- the budget in pounds;
- the budget in this year's media prices;
- customers, or qualified leads, per £100 of media this year;
- the same figure last year.
The first line on its own is a number. The other three turn it into a decision.
A plan priced once still has to be held through the year
Prices keep moving through 2027, so pace each month's spend against the plan in this year's media prices rather than the headline pounds, and a drift shows up in March instead of December. The Crane Engine™ paces spend through the month and works out where the next pound goes. Open your ad account, run the test, and price the plan before the board signs it.
