Ad spend, as reported by media agencies, is picking up in New Zealand.
SMI (Standard Media Index) data shows the value of advertising booked for November so far equals 72% of the same month last year.
This brings spend back to levels normally see at this time of year.
Australia is seeing a similar pattern with a lift in ad spend for October continuing into November.
Jane Ractliffe, SMI AU/NZ managing director, says key product categories in New Zeland are delivering higher media investment in November, including the Food/Produce/Dairy category leading the market with growth of 7.7%.
Non Alcoholic Beverage ad spend is already 5.5% higher in November than the same month a year ago and insurance advertising has lifted 0.5%.
In December, the SMI numbers show just over half the value of last December’s total ad spend already booked, which is a higher level of forward bookings than would normally be expected.
The New Zealand’s media industry reported a larger decline in ad spend in September due to the prior year featuring abnormally high Rugby World Cup ad revenues.
Total national marketer ad spend fell 22.3% in September from last year’s record RWC-inspired levels with the Digital (-2.5%) and Radio (-8.4%) media reporting by far the lowest falls.
The abnormal prior year spend interrupted four consecutive months of lower post-COVID improvements in ad spend, but the trend restarted in October with the early SMI data showing ad demand in that month back only 11%.
But given the timing-affected September 2020 revenues the decline in September quarter ad demand in NZ has hit 20.1% and so far for the nine months of this year the market is back 18.9%.
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