Australia’s advertising market continues its remarkable recovery from the COVID pandemic with Standard Media Index reporting the fourth consecutive month of growth beyond 40% in July and SMI’s Forward Pacings data showing August ad spend (ex Digital) already up 15%.
Total market bookings soared 41.8% from July 2020, partly buoyed by the Tokyo Olympics which aided a 41.9% increase in TV ad spend (TV’s highest July result since 2016) and a doubling of ad spend to the Digital Video Sites market.
And SMI AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Ractliffe says there was no sign of the market losing confidence as a result of the recent COVID outbreaks, with SMI already reporting a 15% increase in early August ad spend (ex Digital).
She says “It’s clear the advertising market has learned to live with COVID as there is definitely no panicked mass cancellation of ad spend as we saw last year evident in the payment data.
‘And we can already see in the early August data that TV, Outdoor, Radio and Cinema are reporting strong growth, while for September SMI’s Forward Pacings show the market is already 82% booked compared to the total spent in September last year – and that’s the highest level of future confirmed payments seen at this point in the past two years.”
Ractliffe says a geographic analysis of SMI’s ad spend data further proved the point, with ad spend onto media based in NSW and Victoria delivering the highest level of growth of any state-based media with growth of 52% and 46.3% respectively.
SMI’s July data has also confirmed the extent of the COVID recovery, with the total market spend 7.4% above that achieved in July 2019 and only $2 million shy of the record level of July ad spend reported in 2016.
Ractliffe says, “The Australian market is reporting similar trends to what we’re seeing elsewhere which proves the current market strength is not isolated, with the US market also back at pre-pandemic levels in July and the NZ media reporting a record level of ad spend for the month.
“It’s clear that all markets are learning to live with COVID and are delivering strong recovery stories as large advertisers return their media investment to 2019 levels.”
And in other SMI news, advertisers are being given an opportunity to trial the brand-level ad spend estimates SMI creates with the creative ad monitoring group Big Datr.
These estimates are derived using SMI’s premium category detail for all media to ensure a new level of accuracy, especially for Digital media sectors such as Social and Display. The advertiser ad spend detail is also not based on rate cards, but on actual bookings.
“Advertisers are always keen for more accurate competitive data – especially for Digital media – and SMI and Big Datr are now solving this problem by combining SMI’s accurate Category detail with Big Datr’s creative monitoring solutions. SMI has always championed greater data accuracy, and now we’re also delivering this at another level for advertisers,” says Ractliffe.