Aussie Advertising Spending Up Despite Sanctions

Spending on gambling-related advertisements in Australia has increased by nearly 26% when compared on a year-on-year basis. This statistic was gathered in July. It’s interesting to note that an increase is still at the order of the day, especially when considering the fact that much tougher restrictions have been imposed on advertising, by regulating authorities.

The statistics were provided to local media outlet Ad News by Standard Media Index. Sports betting operators have been bemoaning the much heavier restrictions that have been imposed on television and Internet ads, but it now appears that the new regulations have not made much of a difference, after all. Interesting too, is that the increase in spending applies to all major advertising channels.

Print Remains Popular

Newspaper ads remain very popular among advertisers. All advertising channels considered, newspaper ads have increased the most. July’s figures showed that money spent on newspaper ads has increased by a mind-blowing 121% since July of 2017. It would seem that in addition to advertising not having taken quite the knock that was expected, the written word in print too, is far from being past its heyday.

Other avenues of advertising that have all grown by at 40%, in some cases considerably more, include cinema, radio and outdoor advertising. Of these, cinema performed best of all at an impressive 83.7%.

Television Hit Hardest

As was to be expected, television advertising has seen the slowest growth of all channels recorded. This is largely due to tougher restrictions having been imposed on televised ads. The Australian Government and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) have imposed heavy restrictions during live sports broadcasts. According to the new, tougher rules, television channels are banned from airing any sports betting or gambling-related ads between the hours of 5 am and 8:30 pm daily. These are of course prime-time viewing hours, and the restrictions caused a lot of upset in the industry.

What’s more, the restrictions do not only apply to television, but also to radio ads. The reasoning behind the restrictions was that children and younger viewers were being bombarded by gambling-related material.

The initial restrictions came into effect during March of this year. Then, on September 28^th, the restrictions were extended to include Internet broadcasts as well as eSports events. The full effect of the extended restrictions will most probably only become clear over the course of the next couple of months.

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