NZ ad market hits another record high in June

New Zealand’s media agency market has experienced a record 31 months of consecutive growth, with a 0.2 percent year-on-year increase in media agency ad spend in June to a record level of $106.8 million.

That also ensures a record level of ad spend for both the June quarter and first half of the year, with the June quarter’s ad spend up 6.3 percent while first half ad spend grew 6.9 percent to another record level of $557 million.

Jane Ractliffe, SMI AU/NZ Managing Director, says the positive ad demand seen in New Zealand boded well for the future, as the greater economic caution and inflationary pressures are not yet impacting on ad demand.

“We’re also seeing for New Zealand an unusually high level of Forward Pacings for July, with the value of confirmed ad demand already equal to 86.5 percent the value of the July 2021 total, and that strongly suggests the ad market will continue to grow despite economic headwinds,” she says.

Ractliffe said SMI’s global data also showed by the NZ and Australian ad markets have been more resilient in June than their global counterparts, with the AU market also reporting a small increase in June ad spend (+0.4 percent) while in contrast SMI’s US data has just revealed the first decline in ad demand in that market in 22 months (-3 percent YOY); while in Canada the market fell 4 percent in June and in the UK the decline was 13 percent.

“Clearly advertisers in our region are more confident in the future than those in the northern hemisphere as they are continuing to invest strongly in their media investment,” she says.

And while the growth in New Zealand demand in June was lower than previous months there was, however, healthy increases in ad spend to for some media with, for example, Digital ad spend up 12.6 percent in total; Radio bookings grew 5.2 percent and Outdoor revenues lifted 1.2 percent.

But the linear TV media faces a tougher market with total ad spend back 11.6 percent as the value of ad spend to the Digital Video ad format lifted 6.3 percent in the same period to now be just over a third the size of linear TV revenues.

And among key Product Categories there was strong demand from the Retail category in June (+27.2 percent YOY), and from Restaurants (+30.7 percent) and Travel advertisers (+53.8 percent).

Across the calendar year, the Digital media has again scored the greatest increase in ad spend (+19 percent) while Radio bookings are up 12.3 percent, TV is back 3.7 percent and Cinema ad spend is up 28 percent.

Meantime, New Zealand’s Outdoor media is arguably one of the strongest in the world as its 7.7 percent increase in first half ad spend has ensured it’s the only country in which Outdoor ad spend has recovered to now be above that achieved pre-Covid.

More detail on the June ad spend trends can be found below.