AUSTRALIA’S media agency market bookings are down 2.7 per cent YOY to the month of July according to the latest SMI figures but could’ve been significantly worse had it not been a 21.7 per cent rise in OOH over the past 12 months.
The result came in a month book-ended by significant events, with the market buoyed by Federal Election-related ad spend in June while the Rio Olympics is expected to dominate the market in August.
The month of July is also notable for the changeover of the Nine and Ten Networks’ Regional TV affiliation agreements to Southern Cross Austereo and WIN TV respectively, with that market disruption likely to have contributed to a 6.1% year-on-year decline in total Regional TV bookings.
However the TV market was also impacted by last year’s broadcast of the Ashes series on the Nine Network, pulling that sector down 4.6 per cent on last July’s Metropolitan TV result.
SMI AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Schulze said SMI was pleased to have worked with industry group Magazines Networks to `add back’ digital ad spend to magazines for the first time in July, the effect of which was to increase the size of the Magazine sector’s Agency bookings by 18 per cent to $13.6 million.
“All major magazine publishers are now selling their own digital advertising inventory and as such SMI has the first like-for-like digital ad spend figures which can be reliably published. We’ve previously done this work with NewsMediaWorks for the news media industry and we’re now thrilled to be able to provide an improved view of the total Magazine sector on an ongoing basis,’’ she said.
“And the data proves magazines to have the second highest proportion of digital ad spend relative to an industry total, with that title easily held by the newspaper market (its digital revenues represent more than 35per cent of its agency spend and 20 per cent of its Agency-plus-Direct ad spend, according to the News Media Index).’’
Meantime, Ms Schulze said the overall market remains in record territory over the calendar year period with both the Digital and Outdoor media reporting double digit calendar year growth.
“Australia’s advertisers continue to reward our media sector for the continuing investment in innovation and product development, with their total advertising investment so far $46.7 million ahead of the same seven month period last year.’’
Government Category ad spend also normalised this month with the total up $2.5 million from the same month a year ago (given the Election occurred on July 2) but the category moved outside SMI’s 10 largest.
