Technology companies and sellers are traditionally the biggest advertisers in the Australian market, with the likes of Harvey Norman, Samsung, Apple, and JB Hi-Fi spending up big across the board to make sure you’re around the newest products.
2021 saw recording spending in the Australian media agency market, with a whopping $8.6 billion spend throughout the year. The month of December broke spending records, as did the final quarter of the year, and the final half of 2021.
As the Standard Media Index data shows, these records are due to a massive advertising rebound following the uncertainty of COVID-induced lockdowns, as well as the ongoing supply chain crunch easing up.
“Given advertising expenditure is so strongly correlated to GDP, this SMI data provides a very strong indication that the broader Australian economy is moving well beyond the original COVID downturn and has instead learned to function extremely effectively in the new COVID era,” Jane Ractliffe, MD and founder of SMI, explained.
“The SMI data clearly shows the economy is being fuelled by a level of advertising expenditure that’s never before been seen, and among the 20 largest of SMI’s product categories we can see the media investment of 14 categories is well above that reported in pre-COVID CY2019.”
Technology advertising spend has lifted 59 per cent since 2019. But the heavyweights are spending in areas they previously never did, cutting back on traditional media spend and moving online.
For the first time ever, digital media took over traditional ad spend.
“Digital media now accounts for 38.6 per cent of all Agency ad spend and grew its share by 3.2 percentage points from the 2020 year,” Ractliffe said.
“The only other media to grow their share this year were Outdoor (+0.2 per cent) and Cinema (+0.1 per cent) as they continued to recover from the huge impact on their businesses at the start of COVID.”