AUCKLAND, Today: New Zealand’s media agency advertising market has finally returned to growth in May – after a full year of stagnation – with a 2.3% year-on-year increase in agency bookings to NZ$87.3 million.
And SMI’s Forward Pacings data, which shows the value of confirmed advertising already within the payment system, shows the momentum is set to continue with the value of June 2019 advertising bookings (excluding Digital) already 5.2% ahead of June 2018 at $60 million.
The strength of the NZ ad market in May was primarily due to a large increase in investment from the Government category following a year of lacklustre adspend. But that changed in May with the category’s total spend growing 33.4%.
But it was actually the Banking sector that provided the largest dollar growth in any category, up 40.5% or by $2 million from the same month last year. And the Tourism/Accommodation/Travel Services category also maintained its recent record of largest increases in demand with the value of May bookings growing 143.8% YOY.
Among the major media the Outdoor industry reported the strongest growth for the month with a robust gain of 31.9%, while the Digital media finally returned to growth with its total ad spend was up 4.3%. Radio bookings lifted 3.7and Cinema’s grew 42.5%.
SMI AU/NZ managing director Jane Ractliffe (who’s based in Sydney) said it was clear a substantial lack of business confidence had stymied NZ’s advertising market for a full year, but that was finally now beginning to change.
“It’s clear a substantial lack of business confidence stymied NZ’s ad market for a full year, but that is finally now beginning to change.”
“Looking at SMI’s Product Category ad spend data, we can see that this calendar year only a third of the categories we track have grown the value of their media investments and that figure reduces again when we look at the financial year-to-date data,” she said.
“But thankfully that’s begun to change in May with the total market finally back in the black, with more than half the product categories growing their advertising investment.
“And SMI’s forward bookings show that trend is continuing in June with the value of guaranteed advertising payments already 5.2% ahead of June last year despite the payment data being extracted at least four working days prior to the end of the month.
“And a full month before we start reporting on the July advertising market we can already see the total value of market bookings to be 75.4% of last year’s total, which clearly indicates the market should see three consecutive months of growth.”
About Standard Media Index
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.
SMI sources adspend data from 98% of all NZ media agencies that buy ads on behalf of NZ’s national marketers.
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