IMAA members have anticipated that BVOD/CTV, digital video, and podcasts will record the greatest growth in advertiser spending in this financial year, part two of the new IMAA Indie Census for June 2023 has revealed.
Highlights
- IMAA agencies expect BVOD/CTV, digital video, and POOH to have the biggest growth in the next FY
- 60% of IMAA agencies expect VOZ to influence their media planning decisions in the next year
- More than half (55%) say that the sustainability credentials of media owners will impact their spend decisions
As more than 90 per cent of indie agencies now buy or plan to buy traditional media through digital pipes, the media channels expected to be the main beneficiaries are BVOD/CTV, with 92 per cent predicting growth of up to 25 per cent or more, followed by digital video (79 per cent), programmatic out-of-home (78 per cent),
podcasts (75 per cent), digital – social (64 per cent), digital – search (64 per cent), digital radio (57 per cent), and out-of-home (57 per cent).
The majority of agencies predicted linear television, linear radio, and cinema to be flat year-on-year, with more than 40 per cent predicting print would decline by 25 per cent or less. The IMAA Indie Census surveyed the Independent Media Agencies of Australia’s 160+ members to look at the financial year ahead across a range of areas.
Following the launch of VOZ this year, more than 60 per cent of agencies said it would “moderately” influence their planning approach to client spend on screens, with almost 60 per cent anticipating that between 10 per cent to 30 per cent of client screens budgets would go to BVOD/CTV and almost half saying it would have increased importance and investment in FY24.
FAST (free, ad supported TV) channels are also increasing in importance with almost 70 per cent of agencies nominating them as ‘very/somewhat’ important.
Agencies were also asked to rank the most important attributes when selecting an advertising medium, with ‘the ability to reach people at the right time’ ranked no.1, followed by ‘influential talent’, ‘a medium people enjoy consuming’, ‘content that triggers an emotional response’ and ‘talent who are inspirational’.
TikTok, out-of-home and BVOD were nominated as the three platforms media agencies were most looking forward to utilising in the next 12 months.
Among other findings, location-based targeting was seen as ‘extremely/very’ important by almost 70 per cent of agencies, with nearly seven in 10 agencies allocating up to 15 per cent of client budgets to test and learn strategies.
Using attention-based data for media planning and buying decisions was ‘highly/most likely’ to be used this year by 56 per cent of agencies.
Sustainability credentials of media owners were also growing in importance with more than half (55 per cent) saying that they expect it to influence their buying decisions soon.
IMAA CEO, Sam Buchanan, said: “Our Indie Census provides in-depth insights into where and how indie media agencies are planning to invest in the year ahead, as well as key areas of importance to agencies and their clients.
“As the number of indie agencies offering full service grows rapidly and more and more buying is
occurring through digital pipes, our members offer the unique ability with their planning and buying
decisions to be agile and to meet changing client needs and help deliver business success. This is
particularly important in an inflationary environment where every dollar counts.”
