Total advertising spend, as measured by media agency bookings, dropped 7.8% in July despite an initial six-day surge for Olympic broadcaster Nine Entertainment.
All major media are reporting lower ad spend, according to numbers collated by Guideline SMI.
"The strength of Nine’s Olympics broadcast and the success of so many Australians at the games has clearly moved an abnormal amount of revenue to the Nine group in July, and with more Olympic broadcast days falling in August that trend will continue next month," said Guideline SMI APAC managing director Jane Ractliffe.
"At the same time it seems advertisers not associated with the Olympics have decided to reduce their media investment and that’s led to another month of lower bookings."
The government category was again the standout with a 61.2% jump in ad bookings in July.
Linear TV gaining the largest share of that ad spend with its total share jumping to close to 30% of government bookings.
Retail advertising was up 12.4% and automotive 5.8%.
However. that was offset by declines in ad demand from the communications and media categories.
"We can see there is a two-speed ad market developing as the product categories delivering growth are growing that media investment in the high double-digit range, and that’s meant that on a combined basis the largest growth categories have lifted revenues 9.8% this month – way outpacing the broader market," Ractliffe said.
Guideline’s calendar year-to-date results show total demand down 1.5%, with outdoor showing the largest gain of 5.1% followed by cinema (+3.9%) and digital (+3.6%).
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