SYDNEY, Today: Standard Media Index is this month reporting contrasting advertising demand trends on either side of the Tasman, with New Zealand reporting a record level of September bookings while the Australian market was more subdued.
NZ media agency advertising soared 15.1% to break through the NZ$100 million mark for the first time in a September month as the Rugby World Cup and local elections fuelled advertising demand.
Meantime, the Australian market reported a steadier result with September bookings back just 3.1% to nearly A$650 million.
SMI AU/NZ managing director Jane Ractliffe said the impact of the Rugby World Cup was clearly evident in NZ where it prompted a 22.4% increase in NZ television adspend.
“The Rugby World Cup has also had some impact on Australian television revenues, with the Metropolitan TV sector reporting its strongest month in a year, and that’s despite the absence of the NRL Grand Final revenues this September,” she said.
“But in NZ the excitement surrounding this tournament also drove general market confidence with NZ’s Outdoor media, for example, lifting revenues by 42% and Radio adspend growing 5.7%.”
The NZ market also benefited from the start of local council elections in September, resulting in the Government Category emerging as the fastest growing in NZ this month.
“The NZ market is now in positive adspend territory.”
But in Australia the Insurance category remains by far the fastest growing, with its total media investment up 37% in September and it’s also the fastest growing in the September quarter with those bookings up 32%.
Media companies also seem more positive about the outlook for the Australian market as their total investment in advertising their own content inventory has jumped 59% in September.
But the best performing Australian media this month was Outdoor, with its bookings jumping 9% to also be beyond $100 million in a September month for the first time. However, this may have been aided by an extra Monday this month which pulled some October revenues into the spend.
And in terms of advertising expenditure so far this calendar year, the NZ market is now in positive territory (+1.4%) given that in the past four months the market has been able to emerge from 12 months of decline.
In Australia the downturn started later and the market is yet to return to positive territory, so for the calendar year period it remains back 4.7% compared to the same nine months of 2018.
About Standard Media Index
SMI 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. SMI provides the only clear picture on how ad dollars are being spent. Its Australian data covers more than 90% of all Agency spend and SMI works with media Agencies in more than 15 global markets.
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