The Australian media agency market emerged from the federal election period in fine balance, with total advertising spend just below the record high recorded in May 2021, but above the total invested in the previous election month of May 2019 .
According to Standard Media Indexoverall total ad spend for May was flat from last year’s very high benchmark, down just 0.9%, with the main feature this month being an extra $41 million in party ad spend political/industry associations, excluding UAP ad spend and government-grade ad spend continued to grow, this time up 42% year-over-year.
And the managing director of SMI AU/NZ Jane Ractliffe says federal elections typically create an abnormal spike in monthly ad spend, but this election time was unusual because the market was being compared to the May 2021 result, which was the largest May on record.
She says, “So the best metric is the total ad spend during the last federal election period of May 2019, and the level of ad spend is 0.2% higher than that total.
“It also appears that some advertisers have decided to move campaigns to a more lean media environment in June, as we can see from SMI Forwards data that 83% of ad value booked during the peak June period 2021 has already been confirmed (ex digital).
But in May, SMI reports more uneven advertising demand with digital bookings up just 2.1%, although key sectors such as search, social media and video sites saw higher growth rates. students. Similarly, video advertising expenditure (excluding UAP) fell by 2.5%, but in this linear, regional television reservations increased by 7.2%.
And the Audio (+4.7%) and Cinema (+68%) media are growing on their own.
In the key political party/industry association category, the majority of ad spend continues to go to television/video, with its share in the category dropping from 68.5% in May 2019 to 72% in May, while the biggest change since the last election was this. moving significant investments out of the digital media category.
Outside of election-related categories, the market weakened with retail bookings down 5.7%, food/fresh/dairy ad spend down 17.5% % and car brand ad spend remains weak, down 26% year-on-year.
As a result, if the government and political party categories are removed, the underlying market has returned to 9.1% YoY.
But after months of continued growth, the long-term outlook remains very positive, with SMI reporting record levels of advertising investment in both CYTD (+7.8% over the prior year period) and in the FYTD, with the market growing more than 12% during this period. cross the $7 billion mark for the first time in these 11 months.
Also this month, SMI revised its financial services market reporting with its ad spend now organized by product. This means that SMI categories such as banking and the new wealth management category now include ad spend from any financial services provider, including new fintech companies.
Ractliffe says, “SMI responded to the feedback from the banking industry that we needed to bring a broader view of this market to better reflect emerging players and this change also resulted in the creation of a new product category Wealth Management and three new sub-categories: retirement, wealth management and payment platforms.
“As accurate SMI data is a crucial tool in the share of voice analytics – especially for digital media where ad spend by category can be viewed for search, social media and programmatic and by digital publisher – we are always keen to receive feedback on how to better reflect changing ad spend trends by category.”
