Australian ad spend cools down in May as political dollars depart: SMI
The Australian advertising market has recorded a slower May, with a headline decline of 6.8% year-on-year due to extraordinary government spending in 2022.
There was a $41.2 million fall in political party category ad spend and a $12.4 million hit from general government advertising.
But when eliminating the impact of political advertising during the Federal Election, there was an underlying market growth of 0.1%.
SMI AU/NZ managing director, Jane Ractliffe, said: “SMI’s data quantifies the size of the abnormal impact the extra spending within these categories has had on our market, propelling it to record levels of ad spend last year but now creating a $153 million hole in ad spend since January which is affecting all major media.”
In different types of media, TV (-15.3%), newspaper (-22.2%) and magazines (-16.5%) were the categories hit the hardest without government ad spends.
[click to enlarge]: A breakdown by medium
Ractliffe added: “`Ad demand for both radio and magazines returns to growth when we remove the Government and Political Party categories, while Linear TV’s decline reduces from 15.3 to 3.5%.
“These are huge swings that prove underlying ad demand remains stable for most media.”
“And there’s another sign the market is returning to normal as SMI’s Forward Pacings data for June shows 87% of the value of last year’s June ad spend is already confirmed (ex Digital) and that’s back to levels we would normally expect to see in a growth market.”
SMI has recently relaunched its UK database with ad spend now from all six holding groups and four large independent agencies.
Got a tip?
Darcy Song was a reporter at Mumbrella, covering media owners, adtech and social platforms. She left in October 2023.
Linkedin
Have your say