Australia’s advertising market has reported a record September with total bookings rising almost $14m on the same month last year, according to the Standard Media Index (SMI).

Latest data showed bookings hit $688.8m last month, a year-on-year rise of 2 per cent and the highest level of growth this year. The figures exclude late digital bookings. There were record levels of agency bookings for television, digital, outdoor and radio although newspaper bookings tumbled 6.6 per cent.

TV was described as the “stand-out performer” with growth in metropolitan, regional and subscription TV sectors. TV saw an overall bookings lift of 4.5 per cent, or $15.1 million, to $348.7 million.

Among the free to air networks, Seven captured 43.7 per cent, up 5.6 per cent on September 2013 while Nine’s 37.7 per cent was up 5.8 per cent. But Ten’s share slipped 3.5 per cent to 18.6 per cent, a figure which underlined comments made today by Ten that closing the gap between its audience share and ad revenue share was an”urgent priority”.

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Outdoor booking revenue jumped 3.9 per cent to $58.7 million while radio increased 5.8 per cent to $48.6 million.

Agency bookings into Digital media climbed 1.5 per cent to $126.7 million, although that will increase with late bookings. Display made up 51 per cent of digital bookings while video continued to rise, contributing 11.81 per cent, up 0.2% in the year to date.

Newspapers fell 6.6 per cent, the slowest rate of decline for the year, but bookings into magazines tumbled 17.6% compared to September last year.

The SMI data also included four retail categories for the first time – food/alcoholic retailers, restaurants, home furnishing/appliances and speciality retail. It has refined its general retail category to include advertising for retailers that sell a variety of products, including department stores, chemists, hardware stores.

The food/alcoholic retailers category delivering growth of 7.4 per cent and is now SMI’s seventh largest category. Speciality retail lifted bookings by almost 20 per cent.

Steve Jones