NEXT Grew 24% Overseas. It Says Ads Bought 23 of Those Points.

Read NEXT’s 24% as bought growth before you read your own

NEXT, the British clothing and homeware retailer, grew overseas sales through its own websites by 24% in the six months to July 2026. Then it told investors what most companies keep quiet. By its own estimate, marketing drove 23 of those 24 points. It spent £51 million on overseas marketing, up from £31 million. Its own word for the result was "surprised".

You will never run a £51 million budget. But three things NEXT wrote down in that report are about your world, not theirs. One of them may explain why your European ads got cheaper this year.

How does NEXT decide what to spend on ads?

It does not set a budget. It sets a bar. Every £1 of marketing must bring back £1.50 of profit, counted before marketing and fixed costs. While the ads clear that bar, the team keeps spending. In NEXT's words: "as long as our marketing teams can maintain returns, they carry on increasing expenditure - because the Group is not cash constrained." This half NEXT brought back £1.77 per £1 spent on marketing, against £1.75 a year earlier, on 63% more spend.

That is the part worth stealing. Not the budget. The rule. Most stores pick a daily ad budget and hope. NEXT picks a return it will not go below and lets the spend find its own level.

Why did NEXT's returns hold as it spent 63% more?

Spend more and returns normally fall, because you buy the best clicks first. NEXT's did not, and it gave four reasons. Google and Meta's tools got better. It ran ads in local languages, above all in countries with more than one. It turned on ads in small markets where it used to do little or none.

And this one, the reason that touches Europe, in NEXT's words: "The EU's new charge on low value imports has meant that some overseas online retailers are spending much less on advertising, lowering media costs for everyone else."

NEXT names nobody. Our reading: the retailers that ship low-value parcels into Europe from overseas are mostly the big China-direct platforms. If they are pulling ad money out of Europe, the auction you bid in has changed. It cuts both ways. The same charge lands on your parcels. And the loudest bidders against you just went quieter.

Which customers were worth the most?

NEXT tracked what customers spend each year as they stay. Home and abroad looked alike: about £292 a year in the UK by year five, £298 overseas. It had to leave one region out so it would not flatter the average. Middle East customers spend £148 in year one and £473 by year five.

One caution came attached. NEXT's oldest overseas customers arrived when it spent much less on marketing. The newer ones came through ads and, it says, "may perform in a different way". Of every 100 overseas customers NEXT won in 2022, 33 were still buying a year later. In the UK it was 35.

So was the 24% real?

Yes and no, and NEXT is unusually honest about it. Take marketing's 23 points away and 1% is left, a figure NEXT itself says "would be concerning". Then it explains. Middle East disruption pushed underlying sales down 8% in the first quarter. They came back 11% in the second. NEXT expects the second half to run at about 8%.

So take one question back to your own store. When your new country grew, what did you change? If the honest answer is "I doubled the budget", you have NEXT's kind of growth. That can be good business. NEXT will keep buying it while the £1.50 bar holds. But it is a return on ads, not proof that a country wants your product, and the two call for different decisions about stock.

NEXT spends 10% of overseas sales on marketing and 3.8% at home. It wonders aloud whether that is simply the price of having no shops or credit accounts abroad. Is a market you have to keep buying really a market? NEXT says yes, at the right return. What would you say?

If you want to run this on your own numbers, the country profit stack walks through it. If the question is whether your product, packing and route can carry a new country, ask us.