Outdoor’s revenue continues to grow despite challenging 2018 media market

After three years of consecutive overall growth, the New Zealand media agency market took a dip of 4.2 percent in advertising expenditure in 2018 – sitting at $1.02 billion. However, outdoor has out-performed the market and was the only channel to grow in 2018, rising 0.5 percent to $138.6 million. 

According to SMI data, 2018 was also the first year where digital declined, down 3.2 percent. Television dropped 2.5 percent, radio dropped 4.1 percent and cinema dropped 9.9 percent. But it was newspapers that fared the worst, with a 22.3 percent drop in revenue in 2018. 

The data shows the categories with the biggest decline in bookings across all media came from food/produce/dairy which dropped 18 percent, followed by banking, down 15 percent, and Government, down 14 percent. 

Outdoor had an increase in two categories with banking up 16 percent, equating to an increase of $1.5 million, and food/produce/dairy increasing their ad spend by 5 percent – up $616,000.

The largest bookings across all media came from home furnishing/appliances which were up 25 percent and retail, up three percent. Notably, bookings in these categories grew even faster across outdoor – up 67 percent and 40 percent respectively. 

OMANZ chairman Nick Vile says it is gratifying to see outdoor growth in a market where other platforms are experiencing a decline. 

“This demonstrates that advertisers and agencies trust in outdoors increasing ability to connect brands with our growing audience.”

Looking specifically at OMANZ members performance in 2018, the growth was even stronger with an increase of 1.9 percent to $123,666,406 gross media revenue. OOH digital revenue continues to increase with significant growth experienced in the second half of 2018, resulting in a 57 percent share of revenue to sit at $39,621,310. 

Total digital spend in 2018 was $66,244,302 (OMANZ members), equating to a 53.6 percent share of all revenue. Significantly, the growth of digital revenue has not come at the expense of the static format – digital is a natural layer to add to static to allow additional relevant targeting via location or daypart messaging. 

“The increase in total quality sites along with the continuing focus on developing digital screens has driven much of this growth,” Vile says.

“We expect that 2019 will see the outdoor category continue to grow and develop as all outdoor companies maintain their focus of smarter targeted marketing and sales thinking, resulting in better quality solutions for agencies and advertisers.”