What you need to know:

• Australian media agency bookings declined by $1.1bn for calendar year 2020, a 15% drop.
• But the year ended strongly, up 2% year-on-year for December quarter.
• Growth mainly powered by late surge in digital and TV bookings.

Australia's ad market market appears to be turning the corner after Covid's economic impact reduced media agency bookings by $1.1bn in calendar 2020 according to SMI. The firm's data suggests the December quarter grew by 2% year on year, driven by late digital bookings and a Christmas TV push.

The surge in digital spending, up 15.9% in December, made it the first month digital overtook TV dollars, per the figures. While Facebook remains dominant with social, the second biggest digital category after search, the data also highlights new entrant TikTok as a strongly performing channel.

Across the quarter, digital ad spend reached a record $223 million.

Yet TV also finished the year strongly. Television ad revenues increased by 11% in December, with revenue up 15.3% for the quarter. That late surge means the TV networks are almost back to pre-Covid levels of investment, with TV dollars down just 1.2% YoY for the December half.

Across all media, the year end recovery means the second half was back 7.2% overall versus H2 2019 and 15% for the full year.

The biggest losers across the calendar year include auto (- $226.6 million) and travel (-$241 million). The winners were food/produce/dairy (+6%), domestic banks (+2.9%) and Government (+3.1%).

"There’s no denying the fact the Covid pandemic coming so soon after Australia’s devastating bushfires created a perfect storm for our advertising market and an advertising recession that was completely unexpected," SMI AUNZ Managing Director Jane Ractliffe said.

"But we can see in SMI’s global data that the same trend was seen in all sophisticated media markets, with an average 32% second quarter advertising decline across Australia, NZ, the US, UK and Canada. And it’s great to see most markets are now also reporting December quarter growth with the US ad spend +6%, NZ +5% and the UK +3% with only Canada still reporting declines (- 6%)."