Aussie advertisers abandon traditional media for digital options: Guideline SMI
Australian media agencies are spending more ad dollars than ever before, however traditional radio and television campaigns are being left behind, in favour of digital advertising opportunities.
This is according to the latest figures from Guideline SMI, which show that Australian advertising agencies delivered a record level of ad spend in the last financial year, breaking the $9 billion mark for the first time, and jumping by $212 million from the prior year.
Even when political advertising spend is removed from the calculations, FY25 still marks a record year for agency advertising spend. Digital video spend was up 20.8%, while digital audio advertising rose by 22.1%. Digital magazine spend grew by 37.7%, while even print magazines saw spend creep up by 2.2%.
This represents a continued shift away from traditional forms of advertising, with linear TV bookings down from advertising agencies by 7.6% year-on-year, and radio advertising relatively flat, with a 0.3% dip.
News publishing saw a decline across both digital and tradition print newspapers, with a 17.8% fall in digital advertising dollars and a 3.4% fall in newspaper ads.
Despite the record-beating FY25, the last month of the financial year signposted a worrying slowdown.
Overall advertising spend by agencies in June 2025 was down by 7.1% from the prior June, with TV advertising dropping by 16.1% year-on-year, and radio ads falling by 14.6%.
Newspapers and digital news advertising both plummeted, by 23.3% and 32.5% respectively, with ad spend across the entire news publishing industry dropping by 26.5%. Digital magazines fell by 15.2%, while print fell a modest 2.2%, bringing the entire category’s 6.2% drop to above the overall average of 7.1%.
Bucking the trend in both the FY25 results and the June advertising sales is cinema advertising, which was up by 11.6% from FY24, and rose by 12.6% in June 2025 compared to June 2024.
As of June, digital advertising now makes up 46.4% of all advertising spend. This is likely to hit the 50% tipping point by the end of the calendar year, as the overall spend nudges up, while traditional spend trends downward.
Despite the upward trend of digital advertising in the audio and video landscape, there’s still a way to go before the model is completely upended. Overall spend for the last financial year saw traditional TV advertising make up 87% of the total video spend, with radio making up 85% of all audio.
Taking a wider lens, there has been a 31.4% increase in the value of advertising campaigns booked by agencies over the past ten years, adding $2.15 billion to the overall coffers.
However, as Guideline SMI’s managing director Jane Ractliffe noted in a media release accompanying the figures: “We’ve also arguably seen the biggest change in media habits over that time, with agencies literally doubling their investment in both the digital and outdoor media over those ten years.”
Despite this apparent diffusion of advertising dollars, Ractliffe said the number of individual media outlets on which they bought campaigns has actually reduced from 7,400 in 2015, to around 6,000 in FY25.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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