AUCKLAND, Today: New Zealand’s media agency market has returned to growth in 2019, underpinned by the Rugby World Cup and local elections, according to the latest data from SMI AUNZ.
Total NZ advertising expenditure grew 0.5% to $1.03 billion – just $52 million below the record 2017 result.
Among the major media, Outdoor achieved the largest revenue growth gain over the past year, with its total lifting 12.1% to a record level of $153.9 million.
Cinema revenue grew 8.3%; Radio bookings rose 3.8%; Digital bookings were flat; TV ad spend fell 2% and Newspaper (-10.9%) and Magazines (-11.8%) ad spend were also down on 2018 levels.
The positive result came despite a tougher December in which total bookings were back 1.5% to $81.6 million. But within that total market result the Digital media (+1.6%), Outdoor (+8.2%) and Cinema (+45.1%) all showed growth.
And SMI’s forward pacings data shows the new year will start well with January bookings already 97% guaranteed.
“The NZ market was fuelled by strong local election-related category growth.”
The NZ market was fuelled by strong local election-related category growth (+22.1%) while media investment from utilities lifted 32.7% and airlines/travel agents grew NZ adspend 13.6% last year.
But Sydney-based SMI AU/NZ managing director Jane Ractliffe said the market was very different in Australia, with agency adspend falling on an annual basis for the first time after seven years of consecutive growth.
“In New Zealand we saw the market strengthen considerably from the middle of the year in the lead up to the World Cup and the elections, but it was a very different story in Australia with even weaker second half demand,” she said.
“So this is a trend we’ve now been seeing for some time, with varying levels of demand across both sides of the Tasman.”
About SMI
Standard Media Index was established in 2009 in Sydney and has offices in New York, London and Madrid. SMI partners with leading global media buying agencies to provide independent, accurate and timely advertising expenditure data to its clients to facilitate informed analysis of the media sector and product category expenditure. Data is sourced directly from advertising agencies’ billing systems and then aggregated to show the combined picture of media Agency ad spend across all major media, media sectors, 40 product categories and 126 digital product categories. It allows subscribers to monitor and analyse key data points that can be actioned to grow share and make better investment decisions.
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