GUIDELINE SMI’s results for April have confirmed the softer ad demand seen so far in 2024 has continued into the second quarter with total ad investment back 5.6 per cent year-on-year, But Market Back Just 1.9 Per Cent On CYTD Revenues.
The reduced ad demand affected all major media, although when related digital revenues are included news media reported revenue growth of 1.8 per cent and the decline for TV and radio reduced significantly. And both outdoor and digital showed lower than market declines with their spend down 1.5 per cent and 2.4 per cent respectively.
Guideline SMI APAC managing director Jane Ractliffe said this month it was the smaller product categories that were responsible for most of the decline, with the ten largest product categories collectively only reducing ad spend by 2.6 per cent.
“There’s been some strong growth among large categories this month with the auto brand market continuing to return to pre-covid levels with growth of 10.4 per cent in April, while the toiletries/cosmetics category grew ad spend an astonishing 21 per cent,’’ said Ratcliffe.
“But we’re also seeing the cost-of-living issues impacting ad demand as travel category ad spend has fallen 15 per cent YOY in April; gambling ad spend is back 19.6 per cent and restaurant ad spend is back 13.6 per cent all due to a 64 per cent fall in revenue from the food delivery subcategory,” she continued.
Ractliffe also said the Australian ad market continues to differ significantly from that elsewhere, with the US, UK, and Canadian markets all reporting strong growth in April advertising demand.
“Australian ad demand is very much out of synch with similar sophisticated ad markets as in the US in April we reported growth in ad demand of 9.5 per cent YOY, in the UK the growth was 3.8 per cent and in Canada, it was 7.2 per cent,’’ she explained.
But as more late bookings come into the Australian database we’ve seen the decline in ad demand across the calendar year reduce to just 1.9 per cent with both digital (+4.8 per cent) and outdoor (+3.4 per cent) in positive territory.
“As the market is so short it’s taking longer for some ad spend to come through, and that’s especially the case for digital media as we’re now seeing that for March the level of programmatic and social media bookings has continued to grow significantly since the last data release,’’ concluded Ratcliffe.
And across the financial year-to-date the Guideline data shows the total market to be back just 1.7 per cent from last year’s record level of ad spend.
