SMI: Adspend spend down in February as print continues to be hammered
Ad spend across print, particularly newspapers, was hammered during February, with total ad bookings for the month down 13% year-on-year.
With last February being a leap year and featuring an extra Monday, Saturday and Sunday compared to this year’s February, print media was particularly affected as newspapers and magazines produced fewer editions.
According to the Standard Media Index’s latest figures, media spend in February totalled $467.7m.
Newspapers – excluding digital and late bookings – were down 35% year-on-year while magazines – excluding digital – were down 18.8%.
Cutrone: Print has seen “a bit of damage”
Daniel Cutrone, head of investment at media agency Blue 449, told Mumbrella: “They have definitely taken a bit of damage, 35% down in February, overall 26% down. We’re just continuing to see some of the major advertisers pull out of print and that’s not slowing.
“We’ll see those digital figures start to pick up once they come into the fold of the broader figure. Advertisers just aren’t seeing the same return in print as they have in the past.”
When questioned if magazines in particular are feeling the impact of the decision to pull out of the Audited Media Association of Australia’s print audit, Cutrone said he doesn’t believe it’s being felt as a “direct result just yet”.
“But it could come into play in the next couple of months,” he said.
Radio was also impacted by one less day in the month with February ad spend down 11.3%.
Industry golden child outdoor saw ad spend go down after reporting growth in January, with a February year-on-year decline of 12.2%.
Cutrone said: “It was probably a combination of the shorter February month. The overall market has gone backwards so the outdoor market has improved slightly against that.
“2017 has just had a slow start to the year and advertisers are in general pulling back and being a little more reserved coming into the new year.”
Cutrone said the hesitation to spend is a result of advertisers reviewing their “entire marketing operations and plans”.
“We’re seeing this across a number of our clients where their investments are increasing in the consumer experience like tech and data and that’s probably taken a bigger driving seat of their marketing dollars while traditional ad spend is slowing,” he said.
Television – excluding digital – was down 6% while digital reported an interim result of down 19% however once late digital bookings are included at the end of the month it is expected the category will revert to a flat or slightly positive result.
Cinema was down 13%.
Looking to the year ahead, Cutrone said he expects July and August to pick up in terms of ad spend.
“The Olympics had some advertisers that shied away during that period. In 2017 that’s going to see an improvement around the middle of the year with more stability and less major events. We should see advertisers coming back slowly throughout the year,” he said.
SMI AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Schulze said SMI’s Product Category data showed the softer demand was widespread with the majority of large categories reporting double digit declines in advertising expenditure in February 2017.
Jane Schulze: Softer demand was widespread
One of those categories is Government, which grew rapidly in the lead up to last year’s Federal Election, but is now reporting a $6m decline in bookings (-26.2%) to $16.9 million.
“Australia’s Agency market will increasingly face tougher comparative periods as we move closer to the one year anniversary of the Federal election last July, and then the Rio Olympics in August,” she said.
“However, March 2016 experienced a similar level of demand as we’ve seen for February 2017 so hopefully that may make March an easier month from a comparative standpoint.”
Linkedin
“Advertisers just aren’t seeing the same return in print as they have in the past”
You should sell the data that deduction came from. I’m curious as to whether this is measurable decreasing ROI or disinterest and relevance of the channel.
User ID not verified.
This might be the watershed year. Google and FB are well past 60% share of US advertising and there have been strong signs of a print surrender by Fairfax (albeit retracted recently when they figured out the AFR would die without the metros sharing infrastructure – AFR print being a vital value piece in the confusing Domain puzzle).
The big question is: will News death ride Fairfax and try to hold monopoly print news brands? Or are the products all so poor now that nothing will survive?
Crunch time methinks.
User ID not verified.