Ad market pulls back as category slowdowns offset retail and insurance gains

Australia’s ad market softened in September, falling 10.4% year-on-year as last year’s record levels created a difficult benchmark.

New data from Guideline SMI shows the decline was driven largely by steep pullbacks across food, government and cosmetics advertisers, with those three verticals accounting for nearly half of the total market contraction. The falls in those categories (each down more than 20%) outweighed growth in retail (+1.8%), insurance (+7.2%) and banking (+0.9%).

Jane Ractliffe, managing director at Guideline SMI, said the numbers reflect ongoing caution and delayed decision-making among marketers.

“The market remains largely infected with a high degree of uncertainty which in turn is resulting in marketers either delaying campaign launches or reducing the size of their campaigns,” she said.

Ractliffe expects late digital bookings to improve the picture slightly, noting a lag in programmatic reconciliation. Television emerged as the most resilient traditional channel, with metropolitan TV down 3.9% and broader linear bookings back 7% year on year. That widens to a 5.1% decline when digital TV revenues are included.

Outdoor fell 15.8%, radio dropped 16% and digital was down 8.6%, though streaming video grew 9%. Across the September quarter, ad demand is 6.7% lower, with cinema the only major medium in positive territory (+7.4%).

Year-to-date, the market remains up 1.1%, supported by gains in digital (+4.5%) and outdoor (+9.7%).