Credit: Margarita Shtyfura via Unsplash
Advertising spend, as defined by aggregated media agency bookings, dropped 14.7% in October with government, food and communications categories reporting significant falls.
The total calendar year ad spend is now 0.2% higher but the October results confirmed the advertising market has turned extremely cautious.
Jane Ractliffe, Guideline SMI APAC managing director, expects the level of decline for October to reduce with late digital bookings.
“This month we can clearly see lower ad demand being concentrated among a few key categories, with the size of their declines pulling the broader market lower,’’ she said.
“Indeed, 90% of this month’s total decline has come from only ten categories, representing less than a quarter of all parent product categories for which SMI reports ad spend.’
“But as the market is so cautious we are expecting the size of the total decline to reduce slightly in coming weeks given the level of late bookings now being seen.’’
In the food, produce & dairy category, ad spend fell 29.5% in October, removing $48 million from the ad market.
Government ad spend was down 31.2% in Australia this month to now be back 32.4% this financial year.
Insurance ad spend grew 21% in October, to mark 14% growth this financial year.
Streaming sites were up 1.9%.
And Outdoor, with the best result of any major media, recorded a 5.9% fall.
Over the calendar year, outdoor bookings are up 8.9%; Digital ad spend up 3.6%, magazine spend up slightly (+0.4% ) and cinema +4.8%.
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