Paris Olympics has boosted ad revenue for host broadcaster Nine Entertainment group for July 2024, according to data from Guideline SMI.
The strong shift in ad spend to Nine came in a market experiencing softer ad demand, with the value of total bookings back 7.8% from last year’s record level of July ad spend.
As a result, all major media are reporting lower ad spend, although Audio media has delivered growth of 0.1% when Linear and Digital Radio revenues are combined.
Guideline SMI APAC managing director Jane Ractliffe said the Olympics had created an abnormal month for ad spend with bookings moving to the host broadcaster.
“The strength of Nine’s Olympics broadcast and the success of so many Australians at the Games has clearly moved an abnormal amount of revenue to the Nine group in July, and with more Olympic broadcast days falling in August that trend will continue next month,” she said.
“At the same time it seems advertisers not associated with the Olympics have decided to reduce their media investment and that’s led to another month of lower bookings.”
Among the major product categories, the Government category was again the standout in July with a 61.2% jump in ad bookings, with Linear TV gaining the largest share of that ad spend with its total share jumping to close to 30% of all Government bookings in the month.
Elsewhere, demand from Retail advertisers was strong in July (+12.4%) as was Automotive Brand demand (+5.8%) but that was offset by large declines in ad demand from the Communications and Media categories.
“We can see there is a two-speed ad market developing as the product categories delivering growth are growing that media investment in the high double-digit range, and that’s meant that on a combined basis the largest growth categories have lifted revenues 9.8% this month – way outpacing the broader market,” Ractliffe said.
And Guideline’s calendar year-to-date results show total demand back just 1.5% to with Outdoor showing the largest gain of 5.1% followed by Cinema (+3.9% YOY) and Digital (+3.6%).
