Credit: Diana Polekhina via Unsplash
The advertising market in 2024, with the best forecasts showing a small increase, actually finished ahead of where everyone thought it would.
Media analyst Steve Allen, at Pearman, has just done the calculations for 2024 and found it finished better than anyone had forecast.
“We forecast 2024 (and steadfastly held to it) growth at just 0.93%, revising this as the year rolled on to just below inflation," he said.
Now all the industry sector figures are in and 2024 finished at +6.76%.
“How we got it so wrong was down to Internet,” Allen said.
He forecast digital ad spend growth at 3.99%, similar to 2023, but it actually grew at 11.79%, adding more than A$1 billion and 5 percentage points.
In recent years the only consistent growth sector has been digital but a large gap opened in 2024.
SMI, which aggregates media agency bookings, shows the 2024 media market overall fell by -0.9%.
This is the worst result in over a decade, said Allen.
The second half of 2024, due in part because of Paris Olympics, showed an improvement, but no distinct trend
For 2024, the highest recovery came from digital, outdoor and cinema
Now to 2025. Where is it heading?
“Pretty flat overall, excluding digital, just +2.57%,” Allen said.
With digital included, the overall market is forecasts to grow in 2025 by 7.95%.
“We expect average audience loss trends to diminish for TV, BVOD now strongly picking up audience," Allen said.
“Both TV and Radio are experiencing the full effects of fragmentation (to which both mediums are contributing)
“Magazines and newspapers have largely held readership and boosted/grew On Line (Morgan December 2024).”
Allen sees modest growth:
Ranked Medium by growth 2024 over 2023
Internet +10%
Outdoor +7%
Radio +5%
Cinema +4%
TV +3%
Newspapers, Magazines, and PayTV, all remain in decline.
IPG’s MAGNA in December forecast advertising spend to grow 6.5% in 2025, dentsu sees the Australian advertising market up 3.8% and GroupM forecasts 3.7%.
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