Australia’s media agency market continues to deliver robust results, with the July 2018 ad spend figures representing the 11th consecutive period of growth as total bookings edged 0.5 per cent higher to $542.3 million.

The data continued to detail the ongoing changes in the media market, with metropolitan press growing ad spend in July by 1 per cent – its first year-on-year increase since September 2014 – while total digital media bookings dipped 0.3 per cent.

Digital media also remains the most patchy in terms of advertising demand with social sites, for example, seeing ad spend soar 14.3 per cent and pure play video sites growing Agency bookings by 19.9 per cent. But spending to the programmatic market dipped 1.2 per cent.

The outdoor and radio media delivered record July results, up 8.8 per cent and 3.1 per cent respectively, while cinema reported the only double digit increase of any major media, up 13 per cent. And while metropolitan TV continued to attract more agency bookings with the total growing 2.7 per cent for the month, softer demand in regional and subscription TV resulted in the overall TV spend slipping 0.5 per cent.

SMI AU/NZ managing director Jane Ractliffe said the results underscore the resilience of the Australian media given the ongoing overall market growth despite large changes in the media plans of large product categories.

“We’ve seen this year good consistency from key media such as outdoor, radio and metropolitan TV but among many other media sectors there’s large changes in share allocations from categories that are having a big influence on which media deliver growth each month,’’ she said.

“The digital media, for example, has seen its demand impacted by reduced spending by the automotive brand category, and for many years that has been the media’s largest advertiser group. At the same time, the banks, media and consumer electronics categories are delivering record levels of July ad spend to outdoor.’’

SMI’s ad spend data for the calendar year-to-date continues to also show the market to be strongly in front, with total ad spend up 4.9 per cent to $4.105 billion – the first time it has ever broken through the $4 billion mark seven months into a new calendar year.

This month SMI also welcomed two new agencies to the SMI AU data pool: Cummins & Partners and Atomic 212.