Outdoor media and cinema are leading the pack in advertising growth, according to early December numbers from media agency bookings reported to the Standard Media Index but not yet released publicly.
Out-of-home was reported to be up 6% for December, led by billboards and outside digital.
Cinema, enjoying box office glow at the start of the summer school holidays, was up more than 9%.
The Australian market has been shown to be resilient but the December numbers are seen as key as to how far ad spend will dip from post-COVID highs.
Those SMI numbers have yet to be finalised but free-to-air (FTA) television will be a leading indicator on the strength of brand advertising spend. Metropolitan FTA ad agency bookings were tracking down compared to the same month last year, a strong December.
Most analysts expect the Australian market will see growth but not as strong as 2022.
MAGNA, in its 2023 forecasts updated in December, says the advertising marketing in Australia will dip in 2023 but still grow by 5% to $23.5 billion.
Australia’s advertising market grew by 8% in 2022 to reach $A22.3 billion.
GroupM, in its December update, puts growth in the Australian advertising market at 3.4% in 2023, down from 10.9% in 2022.
The US has now reported six months of advertising spend decline, with December showing a 12.1% fall.
Insider Intelligence has cut more than $5 billion from its 2023 US digital ad spending forecast, to $278.59 billion from $284.10 billion.
“While we don’t expect ad spend to bounce back anytime soon, there are some channels that will see growth in 2023,” it says.
“Connected TV (CTV), in particular, will see increased investment from advertisers this year, so much so that we increased our CTV ad spending forecast by $3 billion to $26.92 billion between April 2022 and October 2022.
“The bottom line: Things are bad, though maybe not as bad as we thought. Expect tight budgets to continue through 2025, or possibly longer if the US officially dips into a recession.”
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