Nielsen Ad Intel’s latest data shows advertising expenditure across New Zealand’s Investment, Finance, and Banking sector jumped by 4.1% year-on-year

Nielsen Ad Intel has released its 2024 Advertising Spend Report, revealing the top advertisers, highest-investing industries, and key market shifts in Aotearoa over the past year.

Nielsen has launched Advanced Audiences, powered by its Consumer & Media Insights arm to offer seamess integrations for digital campaigns and activations.

We sit down with Caroline Atford, executive director of media in Nielsen New Zealand, to get her thoughts on the changing media environment, how measurement products are working to keep up, metrics as a reflection of device use and how New Zealand sizes up to the rest of the world.

Who are New Zealand’s biggest spending brands? Nielsen has shared the top 30 spenders on advertising for the last three years and each list appears to be a shuffled version of the one that came before.

Marketing teams are constantly striving to engage with their audience through brand reputation, but according to Nielsen, Kiwis are more relaxed and optimistic than our peers, so how should that factor into how you project your brand?

Nielsen has kicked off the year by announcing its Digital Ad Ratings service is now commercially available in New Zealand, following a local trial last year and its international release in 2011. We spoke to Nielsen New Zealand director Tony Boyte about how it’s set to change the digital game by enabling advertisers to compare digital audiences to those of TV.

Microsoft’s combined offerings topped Facebook in last month’s website rankings, with Google unsurprisingly coming out on top according to a Nielsen report that tracks unique audience across all web browser usage, but does not include the use of mobile apps. Further down the list, Stuff retained its lead over the NZ Herald.

The All Blacks’ impressive 2015 Rugby World Cup final victory 34-17 over close rivals Australia played in the small hours of Sunday morning New Zealand time and drew over a million television viewers.

New Zealand’s ecommerce sector has shot through the roof as punters increasingly open their laptop lids instead of their wallets to purchase new items. Data from Nielsen shows New Zealanders now buy 18.2 million items each year, to the value of $4.6 billion, and this figure is expected to rise to $4.8 billion by the end of this year.

Mobile dating app, Tinder, famous for right vs. left swipes, bad dates, good dates, the odd marriage proposal and sore thumbs has taken the world by storm since it launched three years ago. Data analysis shows former popular US dating sites are on the decline as Tinder’s popularity soars, and it appears we’re seeing a similar trend here in New Zealand.

For the first time Stuff.co.nz has overtaken Trade Me in audience numbers, reaching a new record of 1,849,000 further increasing its audience over rival news sites like NZHerald and Yahoo. The news comes off the back of recent changes in Fairfax’s editorial strategy which has seen roles disestablished and reshuffled as well as a clear overall drive to towards the digital.

The local car industry had its best year ever last year, with a 12 percent increase in new car sales. And the growth looks set to continue, with 750,000 New Zealanders planning to buy a car over the next year. But the way they’re buying them has changed significantly in recent years and, according to Nielsen data, 78 percent are reaching for their keyboards to help them make a purchase decision. PLUS: what the rise of mobile search means for advertisers.