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<\/p>\nAustralia\u2019s media Agency market has continued its solid recovery from the COVID-induced ad recession in December, with a surge in late Digital bookings delivering a 2% increase in year-on-year ad spend.<\/p>\n
According to figures released today by the Standard Media Index, Digital\u2019s 15.9% increase in ad spend also resulted in a significant first with the size of Digital\u2019s monthly national marketer revenues overtaking that achieved by Television for the first time in a month as Digital\u2019s bookings soared to a record $223.0 million.<\/p>\n
And that was despite another strong month for Television which reported an 11% increase in Agency ad spend to now be reporting revenue growth of 15.3% for the December quarter and a decline of only 1.2% for the December half.<\/p>\n
By contrast, radio was down, though only fractionally (-0.4%) year-on-year, but down by 22.7% for the full year when compared to 2019.<\/p>\n
SMI AU\/NZ Managing Director Jane Ractliffe said this was now the third consecutive month of year-on-year growth for the AU market which in turn builds confidence that this advertising recovery is here to stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s now no doubt that the market has moved strongly beyond the COVID ad recession and is quickly rebuilding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe evidence is clear as total ad spend for the December quarter is now up 5.4% and we can see that well more than half of all the SMI product categories grew their media investment in this period. And our Forward Pacings data \u2013 which tracks confirmed future ad bookings \u2013 shows ongoing growth across numerous categories.\u201d<\/p>\n
The large jump in Digital ad spend in December was mostly due to the market\u2019s ongoing attraction to Social Media sites with the sector now the Digital media\u2019s second largest after Search.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past six months we\u2019ve seen increasing demand for Social Media sites as Facebook continues to grow and new entrants such as TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat also benefit from the wave of revenues flowing to this sector,\u201d Ractliffe said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the December quarter most of these groups are averaging growth of more than 25%, and the sheer weight of revenue moving to Social Media in the second half has meant its emerged as one of the very few media sectors to now be reporting growth over this tough calendar year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stronger December and December quarter results has seen the Australian ad market\u2019s decline over the second half period fall to 7.2% and over the full CY2020 year to 15% from CY2019.<\/p>\n
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However, that decline still translates into a $1.1 billion fall in the amount of advertising inventory sold in Australia in the year, with the largest contributors to the decline being the Auto Brand (-$226.6 million) and Travel (-$241 million) product categories.<\/p>\n
On the positive side, the product categories reporting higher CY2020 ad spend include Food\/Produce\/Dairy (+6%), Domestic Banks (+2.9%) and Government (+3.1%).<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no denying the fact the COVID pandemic coming so soon after Australia\u2019s devastating bushfires created a perfect storm for our advertising market and an advertising recession that was completely unexpected,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we can see in SMI\u2019s global data that the same trend was seen in all sophisticated media markets, with an average 32% second quarter advertising decline across Australia, NZ, the US, UK and Canada. And it\u2019s great to see most markets are now also reporting December quarter growth with the US ad spend +6%, NZ +5% and the UK +3% with only Canada still reporting declines (-6%).<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the recovery is not just happening in Australia but is increasingly widespread as marketers adjust to a new `COVID-normal\u2019 consumer environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
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