NZ: A Record CY Sees the Market Nudge $1bn

New Zealand’s agency market has set a new benchmark high in the 2015 calendar year driven by an exceptionally strong period of advertising growth in the December quarter.

Total advertising spend soared 4.3% above the previous calendar year to $960.3 million with most of the higher spend directed to the media of digital and outdoor.

But it wasn’t a year of smooth sailing for the New Zealand market with lower demand experienced mid-year before the country’s Rugby World Cup win seemingly inspired a significant December quarter turnaround.

In that period, SMI is reporting a 9.2% increase in actual ad spend, with five of the market’s ten largest product categories reporting very high double digit increases in their media investments over that quarterly period.

Leading the market higher in this period was the airlines/travel agents category (with those advertisers collectively growing bookings 35.6% QoQ to become the fifth largest spending category in this period), while government spending was also markedly higher (+24.9%).

Indeed, the strength of the market was underscored by the fact that the largest category of retail advertising was delivering reduced demand over the longer financial and calendar year periods (-4.8% and 5.3% respectively) but managed to rebound in the December quarter (+1.0%) before growing a healthy 6.3% for the month of December.

SMI’s data also shows the complexion of the NZ media market continues to change, with the country one of the fastest growing in terms of spending onto Digital media.

Total digital ad spend soared 43.3% in December year-on-year period to account for 30% of all market spend for the first time, and grew 32.6% over the full calendar year.

As a result, TV ad spend now accounts for 37.8% of all NZ ad spend and outdoor 10.8%.

For more detail or subscription queries, please contact SMI’s AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Schulze: jschulze@www.standardmediaindex.com“>jschulze@www.standardmediaindex.com