Australia's media agency market is showing signs that overall advertising demand is starting to improve.
The SMI numbers for May show a turnaround of ad spend post the Federal election.
Overall, total underlying demand fell 1.6% at $595.9 million.
While this is stil the eighth month in a row that the media agency market has reported lower bookings, it is a distinct improvement on preliminary numbers showing a 11.6% fall.
The slowing in the decline was attributed to late digital bookings, and the press and outdoor media.
The SMI is now reporting the first growth in Digital ad spend in four months wirth May data up 3.6%.
There’s also higher demand for Radio (+2.3%), Regional TV (+6.0%) and Consumer Magazines (+0.8%).
Metropolitan TV bookings were back only 1.9% and Metropolitan Press was down just 3.4%. Both those media would be reporting growth if the United Australia Party advertising was bought through agencies.
Jane Ractliffe, SMI AU/NZ Managing Director, says the large jump in bookings post the Federal election pointed to a greater sense of confidence in the advertising market.
"We have been seeing reduced media spending from the vast majority of all SMI product categories all year so to see such a strong bounce so soon after the Federal election is a very positive sign and strongly suggests that market sentiment has moved back into positive territory,’’ she says.
And in this election month sthe market did benefit from the huge increase in election-related ad spend with the Political Party/Industry Assoc/Union category spending $38.2 million.
Over the past four months these advertisers – the Liberal, Labor, Nationals and Greens plus union campaigns and campaigns from other interested industry associations – spent $70.5 million which is almost a $20 million increase on the 2016 Federal election.
Among the major changes in political ad spend, this year a far higher proportion was directed to Metropolitan Radio.\
And while digital’s share of this category’s ad spend doubled it still represented less than 12% of all political bookings by dollar value.
Ractliffe says the lack of business confidence in the early part of May was reflected in SMI’s product category data which showed only 13 of the 41 categories reported increases in media investment.
A string of large movie releases ensured strong growth in the Movies/Cinema category while Travel advertising was also strong.
The overall market is down 3.6% for the first five months of this calendar year. For the financial year the decline is 1.5%.
The May numbers in detail:
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