BotD: SMI finally sees ad growth; Vinyl Group asks court to solve shares blunder; New gig for Stutch, old one for Pellegrino
Welcome to Best of the Day, on the day Guideline SMI released some of the cheeriest adspend data in many months.
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The Day Today: Agency spend up; Droga’s warning to ‘lazy brands’; Stutchbury to lead think tank
Ad spend ticks up
New media agency spend numbers from Guideline SMI painted an unusually rosy picture. According to SMI, the first four months of the calendar year saw agency ad spend of $2.711bn, the best on record. The previous best start to a calendar year came in 2022, with spend of $2.7bn from january to April.
The cinema category saw the biggest boost, up by 23.7%. Magazines did worst, down by 29.4%
Digital advertising picks up
Digital advertising was up by 11.6% in the first three months of 2025, seperate data released by the IAB revealed. Video advertising was up by 23.3% year on year while audio was up by 17.8%.
Advertising evolves
Advertising needs to change, Australia’s most successful adman said. In an interview timed with his decision to step back from leading Accenture Song, David Droga told The Australian:
“ I believe that advertising has to change what it is now. Sometimes it can just be storytelling, sometimes it might be a product, sometimes it might be an experience or an event, or it might be that you remove some of the clutter from their lives, it doesn’t always have to be this direct thing.
“Great brands will always be relevant, always. But lazy brands will not be.”
Pellegrino back to Domain?
Jason Pellegrino is in the frame for a return to the helm of Domain under new owner Costar. Pellegrino was ousted last October as part of board room politics involving majority owner Nine. According to the AFR, the US-based Costar is weighing him up as local boss once the sale is complete.
Stutchthink
Former Australian Financial Review editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury is to be the next executive director of think tank the Centre for Independent Studies, Capital Brief revealed this afternoon.
Unmade Index flat as Vinyl Group fesses up to share blunder
The Unmade Index joined the wider ASX All Ordinaries in limboland today. With the ASX drifting down by 0.26%, the Unmade Index did similar, losing 0.15% to land on 562.2 points.
Among the larger stocks, Seven West Media saw the biggest movement, losing 3% to land on a market capitalisation of $239m. ARN media lost 1.9%,
Meanwhile, Vinyl Group is unlikely to trade for the next week or two while it awaits a Federal Court hearing to clean up a procedural blunder. The court will be asked to sign off on the company having issued new shares but failing to put out the accompanying cleansing notice to the market within the five day time limit.
More from Mumbrella…
Time to leave you to your evening.
We’ll be back with more soon.
Have a great day
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
