AUCKLAND, Wednesday: The NZ media market again felt the full consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the economy in May, with the economic slowdown being reflected in another record decline in national marketer adspend of 37.8% to $54.1 million.
SMI AU/NZ MD Jane Ractliffe said: “This represents a year-on-year decline in corporate advertising expenditure of $33.2 million and puts the NZ market on track to report a record Q2 decline of about 40%.
“All major media are reporting very large double-digit declines in May following the trend first set in April when ad spend fell 37.2%,” she said.
“The level of decline is simply far worse than anything ever experienced, with many significant product categories pulling the vast majority of their advertising budgets in May.
“Fortunately for the NZ media the Government category continued to underpin the market and grew its adspend by 14.2% in May, but the vast majority of large categories reported huge declines in the value of their bookings with Entertainment, Travel, Clothing and Toiletries all reporting very large declines in advertising expenditure.
“In May last year the Tourism/Accommodation category was the market’s 11th largest but this month it’s plummeted to 27th position after a shocking 90% fall in adspend as the industry shut down.
“Last year the Tourism/Accommodation category was the market’s 11th largest but this month it’s plummeted to 27th after a shocking 90% fall in adspend as the industry shut down.”
“Similarly, the value of bookings from the Banking category slumped 50% and even the large Automotive Brand category reported a massive 52% fall in year-on-year bookings.
“But there is some good news, with the market returning to a more normal position in the months of July and August, with SMI’s forward bookings data clearly showing far stronger demand for those months.
“Given the NZ economy is the first in the world to be moving swiftly out of Covid restrictions we expect it to be a global indicator with the world likely to be paying close attention to the adspend trends we seeing in the coming months.
“And already we can see a pickup in demand in July and August, with higher levels of confirmed future ad spend than for recent months.
“It is also important to note that while the recent declines are devastating to the New Zealand media, the same horrendous pattern is being replicated in other world markets,” Ractliffe said.
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 adspend across all major media, media sectors, 40 product categories and 140 sub categories.
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