Australia’s media agency market ended 2025 softer, with December ad spend back 9.2%, according to aggregated media agency bookings.
The Guideline SMI data shows full year ad spend down 2% overall, with the 1.6% market growth in the first six months of the year, buoyed by the federal election, wiped out in the second half with a 5.2% fall.
Outdoor was the top performing media for the year, with first half growth of 11.6% and 5.3% over the full year.
Digital was the next best performer for the year with total bookings up 1.2%.
“But caution has certainly returned to the market in December and this time even outdoor is affected,” said Guideline SMI APAC managing director Jane Ractliffe.
In the second half of the year the only media growing bookings was online streaming services where ad revenues lifted 9.2%.
It was a similar story in New Zealand with December ad spend back 8.7% to deliver a 1.6% decline in the calendar.
The biggest difference between the two markets is the sustained growth of outdoor (+3.7% in December) and the ongoing growth of NZ radio bookings (up 3% in December and +9.4% over the year).
In Australia, the highlight of December was the growth in linear TV, with its total up 0.4% with metropolitan TV ad spend up 4.6% (mostly due to Seven’s cricket broadcast and growth at SBS) and direct pay TV bookings lifting by 2.4%.
Cinema also impressed with the value of bookings growing by 3.6%.
But Ractliffe said that given the time of year digital bookings were still being finalised and digital’s total will improve from the current 9.3% overall decline which is mostly due to the slowness of finalising the cost of programmatic campaigns , with that sector’s ad spend so far back 18.4%.
The lower December numbers contributed to a softer quarter with bookings back 6.6% to a level not seen since 2019, driven by a 30% decline in government category ad spend in the quarter plus lower double-digit declines from the Retail and Food/Produce/Dairy product categories.
But in the first half of the financial year digital held up relatively well, with total ad spend back 5.2% and outdoor was flat.
Key product categories influencing this trend included government ad spend, ( 31.7% in the half to remove $68 million from the market.
And Food/Produce/Dairy advertising was back 19%.
On the positive side Insurance brands grew the value of media bookings by 20.3% in the half and ad spend from banks lifted by 8.8%.
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