Voice referendum boosted September ad spend: SMI
Australia’s ad spend got a one-off boost from Voice referendum campaigning in September, but total advertising revenue fell short of last year’s total, according to the latest SMI data.
Total ad spend in September declined by 3.8% year-on-year (YoY), compared to last year’s September, which was the first time the market topped $800 million/month.
Jane Ractliffe, managing director at SMI AUNZ, said despite the decline against last year’s record September spend, September 2023 was still the second largest in SMI’s 16-years of data history.
“While the headline number shows a decline against a particularly strong prior year period, the market remains 0.6% larger than in the pre-Covid September 2019 period with most product categories having returned to the pre-Covid level,” she said.
“And obviously key media are continuing to deliver strong growth, with outdoor lifting its share of total ad spend by 1.7 percentage points year-on-year to now represent 13.5% of all agency ad spend. Outdoor’s Covid recovery is accelerating as new inventory comes online and as key categories move share from the TV and digital media.”
Outdoor was a large growth media in September, with revenues up 12.4% YoY, while cinema ad spend also continued to grow, with total revenues up 17.1%.
Television dropped 8.3%, but within that, subscription TV direct continued to show signs of growth, and regional TV was stagnant.
Total digital is down 3%, attributable to a large decline in programmatic bookings, but video sites/streaming TV grew 20.6% and continued to outperform within the digital space.
[click to enlarge]
“This category reported a 72% year-on-year increase in ad spend in September with TV, outdoor and radio gaining the majority of the extra ad spend,” Ractliffe said.
However, this was offset by the decline in consumer electronics and retail ad spend, mostly due to lower media investment from the hardware and alcoholic retailer subcategories.
Got a tip?
Lauren McNamara is a journalist at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
Linkedin
Have your say