June adspend a record

SYDNEY, Today: In June, New Zealand’s media agency market reported the highest monthly adspend total ever seen in the first six months of the year – and the seventh highest monthly advertising total in history.

NZ media agency bookings soared 67% year-on-year to $ 103.7 million, with that total also representing growth of 13% on the June 2019 pre-Covid result.

SMI AU/NZ managing director Jane Ractliffe said the advertising recovery in New Zealand was one of the strongest in the world.

“We always expected to be reporting strong advertising demand in June given the impact of Covid last year, but this result is really quite phenomenal as no one would have expected any advertising market to recover so rapidly and so strongly,” she said.

“If you look back over time, this June total is much larger than any ever reported and a full $ 5 million more than what was booked in June 2017.”

“The NZ recovery is one of the strongest in the world.”

Unsurprisingly, all major media benefited from the booming conditions and both the Digital and Outdoor media achieved the highest level of June adspend on record.

Demand continues
And the strong demand looks set to continue, with SMI’s NZ Forward Pacings data showing July adspend already 26.3% stronger than that achieved last year (ex Digital) while the value of adspend already confirmed for August equates to 85.4% of the total booked for the whole of August 2020.

“We also see especially strong advertising demand continuing into September with an incredible 67.5% of the value of last year’s total September bookings already confirmed, and that’s a far higher level of future bookings then you would normally see this far in advance,” Ractliffe said.

“The big growth in June adspend has pushed the market’s June quarter growth rate to an incredible 64.3% against the toughest Covid conditions seen in the June quarter of 2020, with the total even 5.7% higher than the pre-Covid June quarter 2019 total.

“The New Zealand advertising recovery is truly in full swing as the market has now reported five consecutive months of year-on-year growth and that’s delivered an impressive 30.6% increase in adspend across the first half of this calendar year.”

About Standard Media Index
Standard Media Index was established in 2009 in Sydney and has offices in New York, London and Madrid. SMI partners with leading global media buying agencies to provide independent, accurate and timely advertising expenditure data to its clients to facilitate informed analysis of the media sector and product category expenditure. Data is sourced directly from advertising agencies’ billing systems and then aggregated to show the combined picture of media Agency adspend across all major media, media sectors, 41 product categories and more than 140 sub categories. It allows subscribers to monitor and analyse key data points that can be actioned to grow share and make better investment decisions. SMI provides the only clear picture on how ad dollars are being spent. SMI works with media Agencies in more than 15 global markets.

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