Ad spend dropped to 10 year low in February, says SMI

April 2, 2019 1:48

February saw the softest advertising demand in almost ten years, says the Standard Media Index (SMI).

While February 2018 experienced a record high, February 2019 saw a decline of 8.3% to $482.9 million, the biggest drop recorded in the SMI database since April 2009.

February’s SMI numbers

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Brittney Rigby

Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.

Topics

ad spending SMI Standard Media Index

3 COMMENTS

Look at the methodology ... 2 Apr 19

Is ad spend really down or is it just the ad spend tracked by this particular methodology that is down?

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Jane Ractliffe 3 Apr 19

SMI only publishes verifiable data, sourced directly from the media Agency payment systems. Every $1 paid by our media Agency partners to media is added to our database. As Mumbrella noted, such is the strength of our Agency market there’s only ever been 5 months of negative demand, so we’re also hopeful the trend will turn soon.

Or is it ... 3 Apr 19

… aggregating weekly data so that some months have four weeks and some months have five weeks.

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