Australia’s media agency market has demonstrated its ongoing strength by recording its fifth consecutive year of growth in the 2016 calendar year with total payments lifting 1.1 per cent from 2015 to $7.11 billion, according to the latest SMI Data.
The higher bookings ensured four of the seven main media scored a record level of bookings in 2016 with the growth led by digital ( up 14.2 per cent on CY2015), OOH (up 7.9 per cent), radio ( up 5.6 per cent) and then cinema (up 0.5 per cent).
And SMI’s category data shows government spending did the most to buoy the market in CY2016 ($80.9 million) due to the federal election and Census-related advertising, but from a percentage perspective the health care category reported the highest growth (67.9 per cent).
SMI AU December 2016 Data.
SMI AU/NZ managing director Jane Schulze said the figures prove the ongoing buoyancy of the Australian media agency market, which in turn has been aided by continued innovation within the media level.
“Australia’s media remains one of the most innovative in the world, with our media companies continuing to find new and improved ways for advertisers and their Agencies to reach audiences,’’ she said.
“As a result we’ve seen key product categories such as automotive brands, retail, food/produce/dairy and travel all increase their marketing budgets in the past year and most of those have also grown their advertising spend in December.’’
Despite this, the early December results are showing a year-on-year decline of 6.6 per cent for the month to $457.7 million before late digital bookings are received. And the level of decline is expected to reduce more than usual at that time given the holiday period.
As a result, the digital media is currently reporting a year-on-year decline of 15.1 per cent, with the growth mantle instead shifting to the metropolitan radio market which grew agency spending by 20.8 per cent.
And apart from higher bookings from the retail and automotive brand categories, the strongest growth among the major categories in December came from the movies/cinema/theme parks sector which lifted spending 13.9 per cent to become the market’s fifth largest category in the month.
