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Healthy growth for TV, digital media in January

Following recovery in January, New Zealand’s media agency market has reported a slight decline in advertising expenditure after two months of growth. 

Total media agency bookings have dipped 0.8 percent despite a 13.5 percent increase in digital ad spend and strong TV bookings (+8.2 percent) despite a much lower result for the subscription television market due to the COVID-related absence of the ASB Classic tennis broadcast. 

Growth in Government category ad spend (+52.5 percent in January) continues to underpin the New Zealand ad market, but some travel-related advertising saw a return with the Tourism/Accom/Travel Services category emerging as the second fastest growing this month (+145 percent). 

SMI AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Ractliffe says the advertising market was poised to return to growth in February, with total ad spend (excluding digital media) so far back 6.1 percent with two trading days still to go. 

“Already for February we can see higher TV bookings, and radio also looks to be returning to growth with the very early February detail showing that media back just 4.7 percent due to strong spending from the Government and Utilities product categories.

“Indeed the early February data already shows Government ad spend to have soared 42.5 percent (ex digital) while the non alcoholic beverages (+60 percent) and utilities (+33 percent) categories are also delivering strong early growth across the media industry.”

Ractliffe says the 13.5 percent increase in digital ad spend for January was driven by higher demand among numerous digital sectors, with the value of bookings to social media sites lifting 16.4 percent, video sites growing their ad spend by 30.6 percent year-on-year and this month the content sites sector also reported significant growth. 

“The content sites sector in NZ mostly comprises the websites of traditional news media and magazine content producers and this month we’ve seen the level of ad spend to these sites collectively jump 26.4 percent.

“And the largest increases in this ad spend was seen by NZME and Stuff, which indicates advertisers are delivering more of their premium digital campaigns to these quality news media sites.”

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