Australia’s outdoor media has finally moved on from the disastrous COVID era with its October total at a record level – well beyond its pre-COVID total – with October bookings up 19.3 per cnet year-on- year in a market back 3.2 per cent.
However, the lower total market ad spend compares to a record October month in 2022, when total ad spend moved beyond $800 million for the first time since 2017.
Apart from Outdoor, other media reporting good ad demand in October included Cinema (+12.6 per cent YOY), while Digital ad spend was back 2.4 per cent with revenues related to traditional media removed and back 1.3 per cent overall. Linear Radio ad spend was also flat but grew when Digital Audio ad spend was included.
Guideline SMI APAC managing firector Jane Ractliffe said the October result was the second largest ever reported by GL SMI, and confirmed the strength of the overall ad market so far this year.
“There’s a lot of market chatter about the decline in the ad market this year, but that pessimism is sadly misplaced as the SMI numbers confirm that ad spend over the January to October period is the second largest in SMI history,’’ she said.
“In fact if you remove Government and Political Party category ad spend to normalise for last year’s Federal election, then total ad spend in this calendar year-to-date period would be up as the Government decline this year is more than $100 million and the decline in Political Party ad spend is $50 million.’’
And Ractliffe said the numbers also confirmed the Outdoor media has finally overcome the full impact of COVID on the industry.
“The total value of Outdoor ad spend this calendar year- to-date is now 10.4 per cent above that for the same period in 2019 to also be at a record CYTD total of beyond $1 billion. Outdoor’s October result was outstanding and the media has strong momentum going into the end of the year,’’ she said.
Results for the financial year-to-date show the market is back just 0.7 per cent on the same record period last while calendar year-to-date results show the market is back 2.1 per cent from last year’s record total.
