During the recent senate committee hearing on the news media bargaining code, Senator Alex Gallacher asked the government whether it was using the piece of legislation to try to save a sinking ship.
Gallacher was questioning how effective the code, which forces Google and Facebook to pay certain news publishers for their content, would be in boosting the sustainability of Australian journalism if the government itself has been shifting advertising dollars from traditional channels to search and social.
“Given the size of the government’s advertising spend, haven’t you been complicit in defunding those organisations by moving to other methods of advertising anyway?” Gallacher asked a representative from the Department of Treasury.
“[The government} has been chasing a more efficient spend, which presumably has moved from print media to digital media or Facebook or Google or whatever. Is that true?...
“If you’re doing what everybody else is doing, what are we doing here? Trying to save the Titanic that’s sinking?”
When the pandemic hit, advertising on traditional media which is more costly and less flexible than digital, was the first to be cut. This pressure caused record declines in some sectors and as the industry emerges from the worst of COVID-19, media buyers predict various levels of recovery for different channels.
The pandemic hit meant that media agency bookings, as recorded by Standard Media Index (SMI) figures, would slump by a record 40.4 per cent year-on-year to reach $345.6 million in May. It was not until November, after 26 months of consecutive declines, that the market saw growth, up 8.3 per cent. In December, the growth was at 2 per cent.
Media buyers are split on how quickly channels will recover, with many predicting none will reach pre-pandemic levels this year.
“We don’t believe [traditional media advertising] will return this year, not until international travel resumes,” says Sandbox Media head of strategy and digital James Sparkes. “Considering main players in the travel space spent close enough to $550 million in traditional media in 2019, of which more than $250 million was newspapers — close to 20 per cent of their revenue.
“Print will be hit the hardest
