According to Neilsen, the British government outspent Procter & Gamble by £38m for the 12 months to March 2009. Its £538M spend equates to nearly 3% of the total of £19Bn spent on advertising in the UK (http://www.adassoc.org.uk/Ad_stats_yearbook_2008_-_8june08.pdf)

The Central Office of Information, which is responsible for the majority of governmental media activity, spent £232m in "traditional" advertising over this period, amounting to 43% of its outlay, down from 54% five years ago. However it increased its online advertising budget by a total of 84%, to £40m, compared with the previous fiscal year. Given that adspend online is now 16% of total adspend, the Government seems to be underspending in this area as £40m is just 7% of the total budget. Perhaps the Government should go to greater efforts to get e-mail addresses from the citizenry, then it wouldn't need to splurge so much money quite so frequently!

However Neilsen does seem to give their buying efficiency a promising rating - given that they saved 50% or £241m, on rate card and industry media price estimates. But of course that is only a real saving if they were advertising in the right places!