SMI: TV sees some growth but overall ad market down again
TV enjoyed a stronger April in terms of ad spend, despite the overall paid media market dropping back by more than 2% according to the latest Standard Media Index numbers.
The latest set of figures, adjusted to take out spend for IPG Mediabrands’ agencies which pulled out of the metric last month, show cinema was the medium worst affected by the Easter break landing in March this year, dropping 22% year-on-year.
TV managed 0.4% growth to $236.7m, bucking the trend of single-digit declines in recent months, buoyed largely by a 20.9% increase in government spending to $31.5m across all media, as it looked to run out ad campaigns ahead of the caretaker period in the run-up to the election.
Network Seven was the dominant force with 41.8% of the metro market, up on its 37.6% the month before, while Nine slipped back to 34.9% share, and Ten back to 23.2% from 25.2% in March.
Similarly the business sector rose 24.9% to $14.7m, buoyed by pre-election spending from lobbying groups and unions.
Despite the initial results showing a 2.3% drop on last April’s record result the SMI expects late digital bookings – with digital registered as 4.9% back for the month at present – will push ad spend into positive territory.
“Australia’s advertising market has rebounded from a difficult month in March, which was largely affected by one-off timing issues,” SMI Australian/NZ managing director Jane Schulze said.
“And we can see that confidence has certainly returned to most media this month, while the overall market will show a good amount of growth once late digital bookings are included in today’s figures.”
Outdoor and radio also returned to growth, with rises of 5.9% and 0.2%, respectively.
However, the horror story for print continues with newspaper bookings down 12.8% and magazines 16%, year-on-year.
