SMI shows green shoot for news; Unmade Index pushes for 500

BY Tim Burrowes

June 3, 2024 10:15

Welcome to a Tuesday update from Unmade. Today we find a shred of good news among the negative advertising spend data – for the first time in many, many months, the news publishing industry saw advertising revenue growth according to the latest SMI Guideline numbers. And the Unmade Index almost made it back above 500 points yesterday.

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More bad news on ad spend but, finally, a positive month for news publishing

I don’t think I’ve seen a positive month for advertising spend in the news sector this side of Covid.

So if you’re looking for a green shoot among the continuing bad news for the local media industry, then that was it.

In the numbers for media agency advertising spend in April, released by SMI Guideline yesterday, news publishing was up by 1.8% compared to the same time last year.

That’s not a lot, but it’s something.

While advertising in printed newspapers was down by another 6.6%, digital news advertising was up by 18.2%. With print still accounting for more revenue than digital in the news sector, that averages out at the 1.8% number.

That’s a helluva improvement on the 14.4% decline SMI Guideline reported for the news sector across the 2023 calendar year. The News Corp quarterly earnings for January-February-March, released a month ago, suggested that had continued into the last quarter with the company’s Australian ad revenue down by 11%.

Mind you, a note of caution in calling too many green shoots. Easter was in the middle of April in 2023 and this year is sat across the end of March and the start of April, making direct comparisons trickier.

Perhaps the picture will become clearer in May.

Digging further into the data, television is still deeply troubled – down by 10.4%. However, that’s not quite as bad as the March 14.6% number.

Similarly radio’s 5.7% fall wasn’t quite as bad as March’s reported 8.1% fall. And digital audio had an absolute resurgence – from a fall of 6.4% in March to an increase of 11.1% in April.

Outdoor bumped along roughly flat for another month. Magazines – down 18.7% – remain a basket case.

The bigger mystery is why the Australian agency market is so far in the doldrums compared to the local economy and global advertising landscape. It was down 5.6%

According to SMI Guideline’s MD Jane Ractliffe: “Australian ad demand is very much out of synch with similar sophisticated ad markets as in the US in April we reported growth in ad demand of 9.5% YOY, in the UK the growth was 3.8% and in Canada it was 7.2%.”

Answers please.