Double digit ad growth continues

AUCKLAND, Today: New Zealand’s media agency market continued to report strong double-digit growth in advertising demand in September despite the ongoing lockdowns, with national marketer adspend up 12.6% year-on-year to $ 91.1 million.

The result represents the sixth consecutive month of double-digit growth in NZ adspend and the 11th consecutive month of any growth in demand, and as a result the NZ ad market is now reporting a 27.2% increase in the value of agency bookings over the first nine months of this year.

Most major media delivered strong gains in September with ad spend to Radio up 23.1%, Digital ad demand grew by 19.5%, Newspaper demand lifted 12.8%, Cinema bookings grew 51% and Television adspend increased by 11%.

But Outdoor adspend finally succumbed to the ongoing lockdown, with the total back 4.3% in September as its audiences diminished.

SMI AU/NZ’s Sydney-based MD Jane Ractliffe said the continued growth was promising with the SMI data showing the value of NZ adspend is now 2.5% above that recorded over the same nine months in the pre-pandemic world of 2019.

“The lockdowns are having a dampening effect on the NZ market as total adspend for September is 11.5% down on 2019 despite strong growth in Digital and Radio”.

“Given the strength of the NZ ad market in 2019 off the back of the Rugby World Cup, it’s quite an achievement for the ad market to already be reporting higher ad revenues especially given the ongoing Covid lockdowns,” she said.

“But we can see that compared to the first nine months of 2019 Digital adspend is up 19.4% while TV spending is up 2.3%.”

However, Ractliffe said the lockdowns were having a dampening effect on the market as total ad spend for the month of September is 11.5% below that recorded in September 2019 despite strong growth in the Digital and Radio media.

“The pandemic has clearly put more of a focus on the Digital and Radio media, as strong programmatic, search and social media gains has seen Digital bookings rise 18.5% above the September 2019 level while Radio adspend is 13.9% higher than the same month two years ago,” she said.

Key product category trends for September included a doubling of adspend from the Other Financial Services category as the Buy Now/Pay Later market continues to grow, while Government adspend continue to grow and this month lifted 26.3% year-on-year.

About Standard Media Index
SMI 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 advertising expenditure data. 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. SMI works with media agencies in 15 global markets.

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