SMI: Adspend spend down in February as print continues to be hammered
Ad spend across print, particularly newspapers, was hammered during February, with total ad bookings for the month down 13% year-on-year.
With last February being a leap year and featuring an extra Monday, Saturday and Sunday compared to this year’s February, print media was particularly affected as newspapers and magazines produced fewer editions.
According to the Standard Media Index’s latest figures, media spend in February totalled $467.7m.
Newspapers – excluding digital and late bookings – were down 35% year-on-year while magazines – excluding digital – were down 18.8%.
“Advertisers just aren’t seeing the same return in print as they have in the past”
You should sell the data that deduction came from. I’m curious as to whether this is measurable decreasing ROI or disinterest and relevance of the channel.
This might be the watershed year. Google and FB are well past 60% share of US advertising and there have been strong signs of a print surrender by Fairfax (albeit retracted recently when they figured out the AFR would die without the metros sharing infrastructure – AFR print being a vital value piece in the confusing Domain puzzle).
The big question is: will News death ride Fairfax and try to hold monopoly print news brands? Or are the products all so poor now that nothing will survive?
Crunch time methinks.