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Sport drives TV ad spending surge in June, reports SMI

June’s sports events delivered a bonanza month for Australia’s media agencies and TV networks with the Standard Media Index reporting a 4.9% growth in ad spend for the month with metro TV seeing an 8.5% revenue surge on the back of SBS’s World Cup bookings and Nine having two State of Origin games.

Agencies reported an extra $650m in advertising on behalf of their clients in June, bringing their total spend for the financial year to $7.35bn.

SMI AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Ractliffe: “Our media industry is in its best-ever health”

The year to date figure included a number of one-off sports events driving the ad market including the Rio Olympics, Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and the soccer World Cup. Other spending drivers over the last financial year included elections in SA and Queensland, the Financial Services Royal Commission and the Same Sex Marriage debate.

June’s press bookings improved with growth of 5.1% and Metro Press titles up 1% while digital spend grew 6.6% to go past the $2bn mark on the back of a large surge in search advertising.

SMI AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Ractliffe said the results showed never so much has been spent on Australian advertising, saying: “Our media industry is in its best-ever health, but of course beneath those headline numbers there are shifting sands with ad spend moving across the major media and media sectors as technologies and audiences continue to change.”

“And in the last financial year, the largest dollar change was the increase in programmatic spend (+$114 million) although we’re now seeing that slowing as it increased just 2.4% in June. The next largest dollar gain was in Metro TV (+$93 million) as the sector reasserted its audience credentials in the market. And of course the Search market also came back to life this year after experiencing some growth pains.

“The impact of one-off events on the market is evident in the largest revenue-based category increases with Government category spend soaring $94 million due to two state elections and the Same Sex Marriage debate, while Domestic Bank spending has the next highest dollar growth in the financial year (+64.2 million) due to the Financial Services Royal Commission,” Ractliffe added.

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