Standard Media Index (SMI) figures for March reveal that Cinema is still enjoying strong growth, reaping the huge benefits of a big-hitting film release schedule which shows no signs of letting up for the rest of the year.
Cinema attracted almost $5.5m of media spend throughout March, in comparison to $3.7 in the March previous; a growth of 47% which can be attributed to the strong movie release schedule that started back in January.
So far this year Furious 7, Fifty Shades of Grey, Cinderella, Kingsman: The Secret Service and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water have already grossed huge sums and still to come are top flight outings Jurassic World, Star Wars and Avengers.
Outdoor and Radio are also experiencing healthy growth in the market and have delivered a strong set of figures for March. Outdoor is up 26%, bringing in over $68m in revenues, while Radio is up 12% and is enjoying income of more than $55m.
Radio looks to be capitalising on the fact that more Australians tuned into live and local commercial radio throughout 2014 than ever before, with an average cumulative audience of 10.1 million people listening each week in metropolitan areas throughout 2014, up 4.13% from 2013. SMI data shows the year on year increase is 9.9% with agency spend topping $137m for the last three months already.
The Outdoor industry, meanwhile, has recorded its most successful quarter to date says the Outdoor Media Association. SMI data shows that ad spend in this category for January-March came in at more than $178m.
The categories which have seen pretty substantial drops – showing no change to the pattern of the last few years – are Newspapers; down almost 16% year on year and magazines which underperformed by a further 19.7%, meaning that total revenues for the sector came in at almost $20m.
TV remained relatively flat for the first three months of this year, almost mirroring activity in the previous summer, and only recording an ad spend increase of 1.5%, says SMI. Total spent between January and March hit almost $795m.
Email Nicola at nicolariches@yaffa.com.au.