Radio leads the way as media agency spend slips back

Tim Burrowes

July 2, 2018 2:41

Advertising spend went backwards in May, according to Standard Media Index’s tracking of media agency spending on behalf of clients.

According to SMI estimates, clients spent $623.9m on advertising in May, a slight dip of 0.3% on the same month last year.

Radio was the best performer with a growth of 11.1%, while digital was up by 6.5% and ad-supported TV streaming was up 3.4%.

The worst performer was magazines, which were down 29.8%, while newspapers were down 5.2% and broadcast television was down 2.5%.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

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5 COMMENTS

1999 2 Jul 18

SMI does not track direct advertising and on average 50% of radio adspend is direct. What is the point?

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Another Agency 2 Jul 18

How can magazines be down 30% every time this research has been announced since 2012, yet they still exist?

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Winston Smith 2 Jul 18

Because it’s a bullshit metric that exclude direct advertisers (many media have up to 60% of their revenue come direct) and it excludes 1 of the big agency groups (MediaBrands) who bill heaps on radio and print.

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Tim 3 Jul 18

What metric do you suggest using instead then? As far as i’m aware SMI is still the most robust monthly dipstick

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1999 4 Jul 18

Surely there is more than one company that tracks advertising expenditure?

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