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Ad market off to a negative start to year as media agency TV spend falls 5.1% in January

Media agency spend was soft, particularly in television and digital last month causing the market to go down 2.4%, according to the latest figures from Standard Media Index.

The poor start, year-on-year, was driven in part because January 2015 had seen a Queensland State election, with television spend down 5.1% or $11.6m on last year, accounting for most of the 2.4 per cent fall in the market which was down $12.1m, to a total spend of $483.1m. KFC-Big-Bash-2015-Schedule-T20-Fixtures-KFC-BBL-Timetable

Among the major TV networks Nine lost revenue share to its rivals, driven in part by the capitulation of the West Indies in the test series, recording 32.3% share (down 1.9%) Seven was up to a 41.8% (up 0.4%) while Ten’s share was up to 25.9% (up 1.5%) boosted by the ratings success of the Big Bash cricket.

For the first seven months of the year SMI figures show Ten at a 23.4% (up 2.6%) most of which appears to have come at the expense of Seven who is on a 39.2% share (down 0.8%) and Nine who was on a 37.4% share (down 1.4%).

In addition to the falls in TV, the weakness in the market was driven by a flat-lining of digital spend in January for the second month in a row with recorded digital spend, among media agencies, growing just 0.1% to $111.149m.

Outdoor and cinema were the two sectors who showed significant growth with outdoor up 8% to $55.2m while cinema was up a massive 22% to $8.2m driven largely be the success of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens franchise. Radio was up 2.2% to $40.3m.

Newspapers saw the collapse of revenue arrest, reporting declines that were not in the double digits, and recording an 8.7% decline nationally to $41.9m, with SMI noting the figures for the metropolitan press market were only down just 3.5%. Magazines, on the other hand, were down 16.3%, recording revenues of just $8.6m last month.

Nic Christensen

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