Advertising spend, as measured by media agency bookings, fell just 1.5% in September against a record reported in the same month last year.
Jane Ractliffe, Guideline SMI's APAC managing director, said the better September data bode well for market growth this calendar year.
September quarter ad demand is back just 0.9% and for the nine months of the calendar year the market is down just 0.2%, or $9.7 million.
"The reality is that the market remains very short, so we’ve continued to receive extra late bookings for previous months and that’s resulted in total spend over the nine months being back by less than $10 million in a $6 billion-plus market,’’ she said
"And with the momentum now evident in key parts of the Australian ad market, we remain confident that we’ll be reporting advertising market growth for the full 2024 calendar year.’’
Outdoor reported growth of 15.8% in September to take its total market share to a record 16%.
``It’s clear many product categories are moving their media investments from both Digital and Television to Outdoor as we’re seeing large category share swings," .Ractliffe said.
"For example, the Food category has grown its Outdoor investment by 46% this month while the Banking category has lifted its Outdoor spend by 46.2%.
"It’s also evident in the In-Home Entertainment category (which mostly comprises ad spend by TV Streaming brands) as the Streamers have typically allocated more than 70% of their ad budgets to TV and Digital, but this month Outdoor’s share of TV Streaming ad spend has grown to 34% from 18% in September 2023.’"
Among other media, Digital ad spend was up 0.3% overall, Cinema showed a lower than market decline of 1% and both linear TV and Radio benefited from higher digital bookings with the Video and Audio (linear plus digtal) totals back just 6.4% and 2.6% respectively.
This month the strongest growth in ad demand came from the Banking product category (+13.9% driven by growth in sponsorship investments), Government ad spend (also +13.9%) and Toiletries/Cosmetics (+18.3% as bookings from both Skin and Oral Care advertisers doubled).
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