AUCKLAND, Tuesday: NZ’s media agency market has ended a difficult 2018/19 financial year with a positive change of fortune in the last two months, with the growth in advertising expenditure reported in June the highest of the past year.
The SMI data for June shows the value of the total agency market growing 8.1% year-on-year to $91.4 million, ensuring the majority of major media also reported stronger results this month.
Indeed, four major media have reported double digit growth in June, led by Cinema (+16.8%), Newspapers (+16.7%), Digital (+16%) and Outdoor (+12.1%). Radio lifted 4.6% and Television’s ad spend gained 1.8%.
Supporting the growth this month were strong increases in investment from the Government category (+53.7%), but also the Communications (+55.9%), Banking (+36.9%) and the Utilities/Fuel/Energy (+60.8%) categories.
And SMI’s Forward Pacings data strongly suggests this positive trend will continue, with the level of bookings for July already at the same level as last year, and the value of confirmed bookings for August already 74% of that achieved in August 2018.
“Looking forward, we can see a far easier path to growth for the agency advertising market.”
SMI AU/NZ’s Sydney-based managing director Jane Ractliffe said NZ’s advertising market was now also facing an easier comparative period in the next six months given the fact that advertising demand has been soft for such an extended period.
“Looking forward we can see a far easier path to growth for the agency advertising market as last year the market was back 8.9% in August and back 7.3% in September,’’ she said.
“Added to that, some large categories are now showing good momentum and we can see in the forward pacings data that for the current July/August period media investment (excluding Digital) from the Utilities category is already 39% above the total spent for the same period last year, while QSR spending is back just 1.1% with a full month to go and the Tourism/Accommodation market is already ahead by 16%.’’
Calendar year-to-date results now show a small decline of 1% for the industry with Outdoor reporting the strongest results (+10.7%), followed by Radio (+4.6%). Television is down 5.4% and Digital back a lesser 1.2%.
And given the stronger results in May and June the financial year has now ended with a total decline in Agency bookings of 3% to $1 billion with only Outdoor reporting growth (+5%), although Radio showed only a small decline of 0.7%.
About Standard Media Index
Standard Media Index (SMI) was established in 2009 in Sydney and has offices in New York, London and Madrid. Data is sourced directly from advertising agencies’ billing systems and then aggregated to show the combined picture of media agency adspend across all major media, media sectors, 40 product categories and 126 Digital product categories.
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