NZ ad market delivers record adspend in May

SYDNEY, Today: NZ’s media agency market has continued a stellar start to the new financial year by reporting another month of record adspend in May with the total value of media investment up 6.2% year-on-year to $ 99.2 million.

Sydney-based SMI AU/NZ MD Jane Ractliffe said: “That has meant the NZ ad market continues to deliver record levels of investment over the first five months of the calendar year, with the total value of advertising investment now 8% above the total for the same five months last year and six per cent above the previous record period in 2017.

“NZ seems to one of the few ad markets immune from the more cautious view being adopted in other countries.

“It’s quite incredible to see such a strong level of continued growth within the NZ ad market as we’re clearly not seeing any impact from rising inflation or any of the global issues that are creating uncertainty in other markets.

“The most recent updates to SMI’s Australian and US adspend databases indicated softening ad demand in May, but the NZ market was clearly bucking that trend.

“SMI’s AU & US adspend databases indicate softening demand, but NZ is clearly bucking that trend.”

“In NZ we’re continuing to see the market underpinned by key product categories reinvesting post-Covid, and this month it’s the Airlines/Travel Agents category which more than doubled its media investment compared to May 2021, and at the same time Government category adspend remains at record levels, up 40% year-on-year in May.

“This month the strongest performing major media were Digital (+20.1% YOY), Radio (+11%) and Outdoor (+16.7%). But traditional Television adspend fell back by 6.8% as more investment instead went into digital video-based campaigns (+28.5% YOY).

“This brings the market’s growth over the first two months of the financial year to a healthy 9.7% with the value of digital media bookings up by 22.8%, radio investment up 17.4% and outdoor adspend up 9.9%.”

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, 30 product categories and 100 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 a clear picture on how ad dollars are being spent. Its NZ data covers 95% of all agency spend and SMI works with media agencies in more than 15 global markets.

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