Guideline Standard Media Index (SMI) data has revealed that the election is fuelling a spurt in ad spend despite the overall amount down by 0.5 per cent year-on-year.
The federal election campaign is forecast to lift advertising spend by around 20 per cent over the campaign period, which kicked off last Friday and will run until the polls on 3 May.
Among the key media, outdoor is driving the highest dollar growth with the total up 9.2 per cent, radio demand improved (+3.4 per cent) as did demand for print newspapers (+2.4 per cent) while cinema delivered the highest percentage gain of almost 21 per cent.
Digital ad spend is back 3 per cent but search and programmatic bookings should belatedly pull the February result into positive territory.
“The main influencing factor in this month’s results was the imminent Federal Election with ad revenues from the Government category soaring 46 per cent this month,” Guideline SMI APAC managing director Jane Ractliffe said.
“The higher Government category spend added an extra $12 million to the market in February, but SMI’s Forward Pacings data – which tracks confirmed future ad spend across all product categories – shows that now the Election has been called more of the demand is moving from the Government category to the Political Parties/Industry Associations in March and April,’’ she said.
“Already we can see political parties spending an extra $8 million on TV in March and an extra $6 million in April, and that’s pushed total ad demand for March an extra ten percentage points above where we saw future demand at the same time last year/
With the extra Government ad spend removed from the February total the underlying market demand was -2.7 per cent YOY, with Outdoor still leading growth at 8.7 per cent and Press still positive with 0.7 per cent growth”.
Apart from the huge increase in Government ad spend in February, Guideline SMI is also reporting double-digit gains in Insurance category ad spend (+15.1 per cent) and among brands in the Household Supplies market (+64 per cent YOY).
The Automotive Brand category continues to drag the market lower, back 10 per cent overall.
The stronger recent results have seen the market’s ad spend across the financial year-to-date results return to the black (+0.5 per cent overall) with digital bookings +5.8 per cent, outdoor +4.7 per cent and cinema +10.5 per cent.
Ractliffe also noted that Australia’s New Zealand counterparts are again reporting a stronger month in February with ad demand up 4.2 per cent year-on-year, representing the fourth consecutive month of advertising growth in the NZ market.
“The New Zealand ad market is coming out of a prolonged malaise and is now delivering very significant increases in ad spend. In February alone we are reporting NZ Outdoor growth of 22.8 per cent and Radio growth of 16.8 per cent year-on-year,” Ractliffe said.
SMI partners with leading global media buying agencies to provide independent advertising expenditure data to its clients to facilitate informed analysis of the media sector and product category expenditure.
Guideline SMI AU: January 2025 Ad Spend Trends
