Brands that pull spending over summer are missing engaged audiences, according to new data from oOh!media and OMD.
The figures, shared exclusively with AdNews by Mel Duffy, head of POLY strategy and partnerships at oOh!media, and Jane Combes, chief media partnerships officer at OMD, follow a year of shifting industry sentiment about summer as a viable advertising window.
Growth was concentrated in formats that followed where Australians moved over summer with rail up by 29.1%, airports up 23.8% and street up 16.4%.
Of the 1,081 advertisers who booked across both the 2024/25 and 2025/26 summers, 64 moved from a single format to multi-formats and grew their spending by 154%.
Duffy attributed the shift to a building advertiser confidence in the period.
"A lot of advertisers were sceptical of summer,” Duffy told AdNews.
But following oOh!’s partnership with Westpac last year, Westpac DataX, combined with new Move Data, has revitalised advertiser interest in the summer period.
“Our brief size from customers has gone up more than 20%,” said Duffy.
“We have seen an exceptional increase in multi-format briefs."
"One-fifth of the revenue that we saw come in was from clients who'd never invested in the period, so that was huge."
The move findings, soon to be released, found people were flocking to regional beach area’s and were continuing to spend, despite what advertisers had previously assumed.
“People are going to regional areas and they are spending," said Duffy.
"We were seeing not only an everyday spend increase, but we were seeing an exceptional growth in discretionary spend as well in all of those regional environments."
When examining what was performing well, Duffy explained oOh! and its clients had assumed FMCG traditional ‘summer’ brands would be the top performers, but that the recent report had proved that assumption incorrect.
"I thought, oh, this is going to be primarily FMCG, ice creams, real summer things like that,” said Duffy.
“It actually wasn't. We saw categorically uplifts in spend across every single category."
"Even this year, when we've gone back into the data again, even in challenging economic times, we've seen spend increase again this year over summer from the last summer just past."
"That's everything from auto through to standard fashion retail, through to your everyday purchase.”
Combes at OMD agreed with Duffy, stressing the industry's past treatment of summer had been a mistake.
"The biggest learning was probably that the audience attention doesn't disappear over the summer," said Combes.
“Having that lull over summer has been really an opportunity to pull out of market, save your money, and just dump it into when key sales periods would happen."
Combes said the biggest opportunity for brands looking to invest this summer, was the ability to build share of voice.
"I think that comes down to the opportunity to build your share of voice at a time where there may be opportunity to really grow the category share at a time where everyone else is taking a break,” said Combes.
"You don't necessarily need a huge budget to play in this space. I think you just need to be smart about how you spend your money."
Combes said brands needed to prioritise creativity and early planning to be successful this season.
"My three takeouts right now that I'm trying to drill into the team: plan early, use the data in a really deliberate way, and if there's an opportunity to creatively tap into the fabric of the Australian consumer summer, make sure that your creative really makes sense."
“How can you show up in a really creative way that is meaningful for the consumer that you're trying to hit, but is not showing up as wallpaper?”
Combes also recommended aligning brands with the location of their target audiences.
"The brands that really win out over summer are the ones that really take the time to follow the movement,” she said.
"They're planning early enough to secure the right environment, and they're following Australians where they're actually spending."
As for when the summer spending needed to begin, both Duffy and Combes agreed the summer period ran from Black Friday/Cyber Monday to the end of February, and that brands needed to be quick to ensure they could secure prime out of home placement.
“I'm trying to drill into the team: plan early,” said Combes.
“We're seeing the market move a lot faster than what it did last year when it comes to this summer period, and it feels like summer has elongated as well.”
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