The Australian and New Zealand media markets are unlikely to report the higher levels of decline in advertising demand often speculated due to the Coronavirus pandemic, according to early ad spend data from Standard Media Index.

SMI AU/NZ Managing Director Jane Ractliffe said SMI, which collects the actual advertising payments made by media Agencies on behalf of their advertiser clients, organised special advertising data collections in both the AU and NZ markets Tuesday night to provide the first insight into how the Coronavirus has impacted ad demand in the past two weeks.

And while the market has been awash with talk of campaign cancellations, the net impact for Australian Agency advertising in the past two weeks has been an inflow of $17 million in Agency bookings.

In NZ, which has been more bullish all year so had a higher level of future confirmed bookings, SMI is reporting a $7.1 million decline in April bookings.

But both markets are now showing similar levels of forward demand in April with the confirmed value of Australian bookings already 46% of that reported in April 2019, and in NZ that figure is 45%. And that’s with more than two weeks of trading still to occur in the month.